Frankie Mazzapica - Drum Majors Instinct
Thank you for tuning in today. My name's Frankie Mazzapica. The title of today's message is "The Drum Major's Instinct". The Drum Major's Instinct. Let me go ahead and lay the scriptural foundation and I'll begin to explain the title as we begin to unpack the scripture. It reads like this in Psalm 68 verses 1 and 3, that David said this, rise up, God. Rise up and begin to scatter your enemies. Rise up and all of your enemies just begin to scatter them. In all of you who hate God, run for your life. But all of you who love the Lord, rejoice and be glad and be full of joy. In that verse, we find the three major points that I'm gonna share with you today. First point is God rise up.
What did David mean by that? Scatter your enemies God. What did he mean by that? And then we're gonna spend a few moments talking about why we need to rejoice and what happens in that process. So let's just dive into the first point where David says, rise up. Now, when I read that verse, I thought to myself how in the world is God supposed to rise up? You can rise up. You're sitting in your seat. If I say, "Rise up". You're sitting down, you stand up, you rose up. But how is God supposed to rise up? The Bible says in Colossians chapter 1 verse 17, it says, "All things are held together within him". It's like your heart, your lungs, your veins, your muscles, they're all held together within you. So he was before all things, all things are held together within him. How does God have every single galaxy within him supposed to rise up? There's no end to his existence.
If Elon Musk could build a rocket that would never stop. He lights it... and it never stops. That rocket could never go outside of the presence of God. There's no end to him. In Nahum chapter 1 verse 3, it says, that the clouds in the air are the dust of his feet. When the Lord moves, the clouds are his dust. When you walk down the beach and little particles of sand follow your feet as you walk for the Lord, that's the clouds. When you drive down the street and you look through the window and you see clouds, that's the dust of his feet. And here David is saying, "God, rise up". Makes absolutely no sense.
Let me illustrate what we're talking about. Dr. Martin Luther King preached a sermon and I stole his title. It's the title of this sermon. I would have stole the entire sermon, but I can't preach like him, but I have no chance. I just gotta preach me. But like me, sorry. I've already preached this sermon to me, but he calls a certain belief system, The Drum Major's Instinct. And what he's illustrating is that every one of us has this instinct within us to be the drum major. If you've ever seen a parade, the drum major is out front. The brass is behind them. Flutes are behind them. Clarinet is behind them. Can't hear those people, but they're doing their best. They're behind them. If you play the flute, just keep on going. We appreciate what we think you sound like the drum major is out front.
And Martin Luther King says, all of us have this instinct where we want to be out front. We want to be acknowledged. We want to be prioritized. Intrinsically, we want to be admired. At the core of who we are that's one of the most driving forces within us. The drum major instinct. We have this instinct. I need to be admired. And if I think for one second that I'm not, then I begin to go down this spiral of depression and not feeling like I'm a great contributor. This is the drum major's instinct. This is what David had. If you read about David time after time again, you can see that he's living his life driven by the need to be admired. But if you continue to unpack his story, what we find him saying is God, I need you to rise up. He's not saying stand up. He's saying, I am tired of being so self consumed. I'm tired. It has made me exhausted.
I have been living to want to be admired and I can't do it anymore. I have reached a place in my life where now I'm getting depressed. I'm getting down. My self image has dropped so low and now David is coming and he's saying I am done with this. If I am never admired, if I am never ever receiving compliments again, aren't we addicted to compliments? It's like, no, no, no, no. You don't have to say that. Please say that. "Oh, that's a pretty dress". "Oh, you think so"? "Love your nails". "Really"? When our daughter first started getting her nails done, she was like five. She's like, "You like my nails"? Like, "I don't know, I can't see 'em". We want to be admired. And David is saying this has become too much. It has become, I instead of demoting you throughout my life, instead of pushing you down and me standing out front now, I'm done. I'm done. I see where it's got me. Lord, I'm rising you up in my life.
If there's one thing I'm going to do, it's going to worship you. If there's one thing I'm gonna do, it's gonna praise you. Rise up, rise up, rise up, rise up in my life. There's a lady by the name of Harriet Robinson Green. The Lord blessed her. She was a lady on Wall Street that was making millions and millions of dollars. But if you study about her, they don't refer to her as a millionaire. They don't even refer to her as someone who understood stocks and bonds. This was earlier in the 20th century. They refer to her as The Witch of Wall Street. She was so greedy. It was about her. She was the drum major's instinct. She was so greedy and so tight with her money that she didn't even turn the hot water on in her house. She never bought new clothes unless there was holes in it. Her children, her family, her husband, they went without the most basic fundamental needs.
And you know what they say? That she died as one of the most unhappy people that has ever been studied. I'll tell you this. I believe that the Lord regretted blessing her in that way. I believe that God had a plan for her. That what God gives us, he expects to flow through us. That God doesn't bless you and I so that we can sit down and rock in a rocking chair, you know, basically I'm incredible. That's not what he had in mind, but she was consumed with an unbridled drum major instinct. It was about her and she died unhappy. This is when David said no, no, no, no, no, I'm raising you up.
Now, when it says, "Let the enemies be scattered," that is hard to wrap our heads around because Satan was in heaven as you know, and the Bible says that he was an angel of light. Light bursts through him. Have you ever had a kaleidoscope and you're twisting it and every time you twist it, there's just hundreds of colors, colors that you've never seen before. Every time you twist it, there's just a different spectrum of colors. These colors were bursting out of him almost as if he was translucent. He was a bearer of light. You are a bearer of oxygen. It is in you. You expel, you breathe it in. You breathe, I don't know hydrogen in, oxygen out. I don't know how that all works. But whatever is going on in here, you're a bearer and within you comes out, he was a bearer of light.
And the Lord says that the Bible says this, he became so evil, he struck him out of heaven like a lightning bolt. Have you ever been driving on the road and you look ahead and it's like, and you're like, whoa, that was close. Like lightning. And on his way out, he swiped a third of the angels to come with him. And now David is saying, scatter your enemies. He already bolted them out. Kaboom! What in the world? But the Bible says this, that in Psalms 92 verse 9, it says that the ungodly people, he will scatter them as his own enemy. To illustrate this point, my brother has a two year old son. Him and his wife were at the airport last year. His son was one and he was trying to learn how to walk. He was kind of stumbling around.
There were four teenagers leaning up against the wall. Let's just for lack of an adjective that would be appropriate in the house of the Lord. Let's just say they were rascals. But as soon as my brother turned his head from his son, his son's name is Judah. They grabbed a Kleenex and rolled it up and pinged it against Judah's head, bang, fell down. But my brother saw it out the corner of his eye and he went ballistic. He looked at all four of them and said, "Do you understand that I am about to kill you, you, you and you. I'm about to kill you. If you even look at my son, just look at him, I'm coming after you". Security was being called. Everybody in the gate was around. My brother did not care. "Don't even look at my son". The tissue didn't hit my brother. It wasn't at him, but an enemy of his son was an enemy of his. Whoever attacks my son, I'm going to attack you. Your enemy is my enemy.
So when the Bible says this, "Lord scatter your enemies," David is saying, you see the enemies, the ungodly people, they're talking about me. They're trying to tear me down. They're tearing my life up. My life is miserable because of them. Scatter your enemies. He's not saying scatter my enemies. He already knows an enemy of his is an enemy of his. And so he's saying, "God, tear 'em up. Scatter 'em". Let me go to my next point. Oh, by the way, you cannot call on God and say, "Scatter your enemies". By the way, enemies are not necessarily people, they're spirits. A spirit of poverty that has been tormenting the generations above you. This is an enemy that you can't identify. You can only see the results. A spirit of depression, a spirit of suicide, a spirit that causes your family to have discord. These are enemies. And you say to the Lord, "Scatter them".
If you could see the devil, if he had a physical body and you had a baseball bat, you would come up to him and crack him in the head, but you can't see him. He's a spirit. You don't know if he's there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, you don't know. In every demon, no demons show up alone. It's just like you and I, you get invited to a party. Nobody shows up to a party by themselves. You bring a friend, a friend that you like, a friend that's kinda like you. When one spirit of depression shows up, they bring a spirit of anger. Well, that one doesn't wanna come by himself either. A spirit of anger, spirit of depression, a spirit of darkness, a spirit of disunity. And David's saying, I can't find these guys.
If I could, I would shoot them between the eyes. They're messing my whole life up. God, you are first. You are everything. Tell me what you want me to do. I'm gonna obey everything. If you want me to stand on my head and spit jelly beans, give me some jelly beans. I'll do whatever you want me to do. And when the Lord sees you rising up, he says, I will scatter those spirits, those demonic spirits. Those of you who are parents, there is no pain greater than seeing your children fighting a spirit and they don't even know it's a spirit and you back up and say that enemy of my child is an enemy of mine. And what is an enemy of mine is an enemy of yours. Scatter them. Send them out like a bolt of lightning. Send them to the Pacific Ocean. I don't care what you do with them, but in this 3ft radius, they got to go. They got to go.
Say it with me, "They got to go". They gotta go. Last point. So we understand that if we are going to follow these unbridled instincts, I will be admired, I will be number one, I will follow you just as long as it's something that I wanna do. Submission is only on display when God wants you to do something that you don't want to do. If God asks you to do something that you already wanna do, that's not submission. Are you with me? Say, "Yes". When God looks down and he sees you no longer want to be the primary. You want him to rise up. He says, "I'm going to scatter your enemies".
And what's gonna end up happening, point number three, is you are going to rejoice and be filled with joy. When the Lord scatters these enemies, the number one priority is to take a spirit. This is how the enemy fights us, okay? Before he can get any person to do an act of sin, he has to put that idea in their head first. That idea. Before you ever speak against someone, the idea comes first. Before you do anything, the idea comes first. And so the enemy needs to be able to control your thoughts. You know that it's the enemy as soon as that thought comes to your mind.
Now, there was a study done by several sociologists and psychologists, and they were trying to figure out what's most powerful. Being incredibly positive or pushing negativity out of your head. They did thousands of interviews and what they came up with was pushing negativity out of your head was unequivocally more beneficial and powerful than speaking positive things. Now they say don't stop speaking positive things. Don't stop. But you have to uproot, you have to get that negativity out of your head. And then they start saying things that make you think that they're quoting the Bible because in actuality, they are. It says this, that voice in your head, listen to this word, is the accuser.
That voice accuses you and demotes you and causes you to be wrapped up in these ropes, these ropes. You just feel horrible about everything. I was in my kitchen earlier this week, I had already prepared this message. This particular point was already percolating in my soul. I was in my kitchen and I was leaning back on the sink. There was nobody in the kitchen except for me. I'm holding a glass of water. One negative thought came into my mind and all of a sudden it was like bombarded, this negative thought, that negative thought, this, this, this and I could feel myself like the Wicked Witch of the East. You just, "I'm melting. I'm melting". I felt myself just melting underneath the negativity. And I'm trying to grasp my way out of it. I know what's happening. I'm trying to get out of it and I'm holding a glass of water and I'm like, I've got, I know what's happening. This negativity. It's the voice of the accuser. I've got to get it out.
Your mind can only think about one thing at a time. And so I've got to remove and replace, but I'm so weak in the moment that I look down at our floor. Now our house is like, I don't know, 27 years old, we bought it when it was 15 years old. It's an old house. We had to replace the floor in our kitchen. We picked out that floor and we like that floor. I looked down at the floor and all I could find within me to praise him was thank you for that floor. That's all the strength I had. Then I looked up and I saw our coffee machine. Aside from my wife and my three children, I've got more affection for that in my house than anything else.
If somebody comes into our house with a mask and 14 Uzis strapped all over 'em. Don't touch my family or that coffee machine you can have whatever else you want. I will help you carry things out of my house. I will open the door for you and do not touch the coffee machine. I looked at the floor. Thank you. I looked at the coffee machine. I said, thank you. I looked at the couch. I said, thank you. And the Holy Spirit began to help me and I was able to thank him for more significant things. I was able to thank him in that spirit, that negativity that was pulling me down. It had to run like a snake running out of a garden. It was like it just took over. It was in that moment where I'm like, I'm lifting you up.
Now, scatter my enemies. I'm gonna take that negative thought out. I'm gonna just find the most basic fundamental thing that I can find. I'm gonna start there. The Holy Spirit will raise me up and scatter those enemies. Scatter them. I wanna tell you this, God is doing 10,000 things in your life, but you're probably only aware of three. I want you to back up and say, "Lord, thank you for being my God. Thank you for rescuing me. Thank you that when I say rise up, even though I haven't even acknowledged you in a long time that you rise up with excitement that you send your angels to fight for me. Oh, I love you, Lord so much". Come on, put your hands together for that. Oh, I love you Jesus. Oh, I love you.