In Chapter 6 of 1 Samuel, the people of Israel experienced some of the darkest days of their history. Their enemies had won a great victory and the Ark of the Lord had been captured. Because God had brought a great plague upon their enemies, the Ark of the Lord was returned, but the Israelites were careless and casual in their treatment of the Ark, and so the Lord struck down many men.
They people mourned over the consequences of their sin, but did not genuinely repent of their sins until 20 years later. When they repented, God brought a mighty revival upon the land. Captured territories were restored. Their enemies were subdued. And there was peace in the land.
Now another twenty years have passed since that great revival. The winds of change have begun to blow.
• Samuel’s youthful energy has given way to old age
• God’s people have forgotten His revival and have returned to their own ways
• Samuel’s sons have forsaken their Father’s ways, and have embraced wickedness
• The mighty fire of revival has waned and a selfish and sinful decision is hatched in the minds of the religious leaders of the day
• A sinful seed was planted in the mind of the elders of Israel, and this seed sprouted and grow up to be a poisonous bitter plant that returned the people to their unrighteous ways, rejected God has their true King, and ruined the revival that He had begun
a. When Samuel grew old, it was obvious that the time was coming for him to pass the mantle of authority to someone. Naturally, he turned to his two sons Joel and Abijah.
b. But it was obvious that his sons did not walk in his ways. They were ungodly and unrighteous. They turned aside to dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.
c. Their job was to pronounce judgment for the people, but instead they perverted judgment before the people.
d. Because of this, the elders (the leaders) of the Israelites gathered together and approached Samuel. In verse 5 they said, “You are old and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us such as all the other nations have.”
e. The people of God then make a disastrous decision by not seeking the Lord but instead doing what their leaders tell them to do. (Blackaby, Chosen to be God’s Prophet, p. 123).
f. Joel and Abijah were wicked, but so was the request of the elders. Notice the reason for their request: to be like all the other nations. So what’s the big deal? Was their anything wrong in the request?
g. “The sin of Israel in requesting a king did not rest in any evil inherent in kingship itself, but in the kind of kingship the people envisioned and their reason for requesting it. Their desire was for a form of kingship that denied their covenant relationship with the Lord, who himself was pledged to be their savior in deliverer. In requesting a king ‘like all the other nations’ they broke the covenant, rejected the Lord who was their King, and forgot his constant provisions for their protection in the past.”
h. Deut. 5:1-3, “Hear, O Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today. Learn them and be sure to follow them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. It was not with our fathers that the Lord made this covenant but all of us who are alive here today. (6) I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me…”
i. God entered a covenant relationship with the people of Israel, and a key element of that covenant was their allegiance and obedience to God as their King. As their King, God had a special calling for His people.
i. Leviticus 20:26, “You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.”
ii. Numbers 23:9, “From the rocky peaks I see them, from the heights I view them. I see a people who live apart and do not consider themselves one of the nations.”
j. It was God’s desire from the beginning that His people be set apart! It was His desire from the beginning that His people should not consider themselves like the other nations of the world.
i. His people were to be different.
ii. In the world’s eyes, His people were to be peculiar.
k. But here, His people cry out and ask permission to be like all the other nations.
l. The elders requested a change in government. They requested a change; they wanted a new leader. “Give us a King!”
m. Samuel is disturbed by the request. He was displeased with the request and so he turned to God in prayer. And in 1 Samuel 8:7, the Lord said, “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do.” Look how this verse ties back into the passage I read from Deut. 5 a minute ago. (Connection to the Lord’s salvation from Egypt, forsaking Him as their God.)
n. This was not a new warning. God promised his people blessing when they followed Him, and curses when they turned away from them.
o. This is not because God is mean, or vengeful, are cruel. There is a purpose to the blessings of God and a purpose to the curses.
i. The blessings of God are to demonstrate His working among His people.
ii. The curses of God are to remind the people that they have forsaken their first love, that the have fallen away from Him, and that they are following after false gods.
iii. The curses of God are the disciplines of a Heavenly Father who loves His children and longs to walk with them in a sweet fellowship. The curses of God are the means of the Father’s discipline.
1. God disciplines People when they turn their back on Him.
2. Through the trials of chastisement the Heavenly Father cries out through the megaphone of pain, “Come back to me! Come back to my promises! Come back to my blessings.”
p. The people heard the warnings from Samuel. He told them:
i. The king will take your sons and force them to serve in his army
ii. He will take your daughters and make them work for him
iii. He will take 10% of your grain and grapes, your sheep and yourselves for his service
iv. And when that day comes, Samuel warned, “you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
q. The people heard the warnings from Samuel, but they rejected them. 1 Samuel 8:19 says, “No! We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”
r. The people rejected the rightful rulership of God Almighty. They rejected Him as their leader. They rejected Him as their King. They rejected Him as the One who goes before, and fights battles.
s. And the people got exactly what they asked for. My friends, be very careful what you ask for, because you just might get it! Verse 21 says, “Listen to them and give them a king.” And with that, the revival died.
t. Today the Church of Jesus Christ represents God’s Chosen People. His desire for the Church is the same as His desire for Israel. He has called the church to be set apart. He has called the church to be different. He has called the church to refrain from considering themselves like the rest of the world.
u. “In a recent poll, George Barna, a sociologist and research expert, compared the lifestyles of Christians and non-Christians, using 131 different measures of attitude, behaviors, values, and beliefs. His conclusion, ‘In the aspects of lifestyle where Christians can have their greatest impact on the lives of non-Christians, there are no visible differences between the two segments…
We talk more about rights than we do responsibilities
We talk more about privileges than we do purity
We dabble with our sin and in so doing deny our Savior.
v. “‘Our gospel,’ laments Dr. Henry Blackaby, author of Experiencing God, ‘is cancelled by the way we live.’” (Robert Lewis, and Rob Wilkins, The Church of Irresistible Influence, p. 24-25.”
w. The Church ruins a revival when it rejects God as their King and seeks to be like the other nations.
x. The church ruins a revival when it returns to the things of the world that they had previously forsaken.
y. “Many of us are involved in things—sinful habits, moral compromises, ethical lapses, or spiritual accommodations—that we rationalize as petty, trivial, or unimportant. Though we know better, we dabble in these things because we think they are too insignificant to worry about. We think they’re really no big deal…Later we discover…that living our lives on such fault lines ultimately results in incomprehensible damage to ourselves and to those around us…We let down a few standards here, or a few scruples there, and we say, ‘Oh, it isn’t that big of a deal…’ A kind of unavoidable domino effect somehow magnifies and multiplies the import of even the most insignificant spiritual breaches. Sin has consequences, and those consequences simply cannot be swept under the rug. Cracks in our character—regardless of how imperceptible they may be at first—inevitably cause incalculable damage.” (O. S. Hawkins, Moral Earthquakes and Secret Faults (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996, 10).
`a. “Almost everyone of us has heard the term ‘slippery slope.’ That phrase refers to some sort of process that occurs so smoothly—many times unwaringly—that whoever is on that slope cannot perceive it or does not know how to get off of it. A good example of this is the way an adulterous affair begins.
aa. “Most people do not wake up one morning and think, ‘You know, I think I’m going to begin an affair today.’ Instead, it begins with a gradual distancing that occurs between a husband and wife—many times in response to some other situations or circumstances occurring in their respective lives. At some point though, the distance becomes so great that it cannot ever be effectively bridged again.
ba. “True heart separation occurs, and eventually an affair results. This spiritual fall is gradual. It is a process. It takes place in stages, one leading to another in a sort of chain reaction. Once on that slippery slope, we drift ever downward, unable to arrest our inertia. Eventually, our speed carries us farther down than we ever thought possible.” (Hawkins, 86).
Most people don’t wake up and say, “I think I am going to ruin my family with an addiction to alchol.” NO, instead people play a little here and a little here and then begin the slide down the slippery slope that leads to family ruin.
a. Holiness is the habit of being of one mind with God, according as we find His mind described in Scripture. It is the habit of agreeing in God’s judgment, hating what He hates, loving what He loves, and measuring everything in this world by the standard of His Word. He who most entirely agrees with God, he is the most holy man.
b. A holy man will endeavor to shun every known sin and to keep every known commandment. He will have a decided bent of mind towards God, a hearty desire to do His will, a greater fear of displeasing Him than of displeasing the world, and a love to all His ways. He will feel what Paul felt when he said, "I delight in the law of God after the inward man" (Rom. 7:22), and what David felt when he said, "I esteem all Your precepts concerning all things to be right, and I hate every false way" (Ps. 119:128).
c. A holy man will strive to be like our Lord Jesus Christ. He will not only live the life of faith in Him and draw from Him all his daily peace and strength, but he will also labor to have the mind that was in Him and to be conformed to His image (Rom. 8:29).
II. How to ruin a revival
a. Pride
i. “Step one on the spiritual downgrade is thus an overweening confidence in the flesh. It is a dangerous thing to be so sure of ourselves, yet it is almost as if we are intent on training people to flaunt confidence in the flesh by redoubling our efforts to teach self-esteem, self-confidence, self-reliance, and self-actualization.” (Hawkins, 87).
ii. The Israelites forgot that it was God that had given them the victory over the Philistitines. The Israelites forgot that God had given them peace with the Ammorites. They forgot, and now they thought they could handle it alone, with a man as their King, not God.
I believe that God is up to great things at Bridgeway, but pride will quickly put an end to what God is doing.
God will not bless the proud. He will humble the proud. But to those who humble themselves, God will lift them up.
b. Prayerlessness
i. “What happens when we exude confidence in the flesh? The answer is that we take the next step on the spiritual downgrade. We resolve ourselves to prayerlessness.” (Hawkins, 87).
ii. The Israelites did not listen to the voice of God because they were not active in their prayer life. They had forget that God, their King, wanted to speak to them and lead them.
iii. “Pride and self-confidence naturally lead to prayerlessness. They go together, like steak and potatoes, corned beef and cabbage, or peanut butter and jelly. Pride and prayerlessness. One who things he can stand alone has no sense of the need for a prayer life. After all, what need is there to pray if we think ourselves strong enough to resist temptation.” (Hakwins, 87-88).
c. Peer pressure
i. When you have ceased following God as King, you look to the world for an example. “We want a king just like the other nations.”
i. At that point, God says, “Okay. You want the things of the world. Go ahead. Have what you asked for.”
How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets real thing, it is irresistible.
C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady, New Bible Commentary, p. 28.
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"Holiness does not consist in mystic speculations, enthusiastic fervours, or uncommanded austerities; it consists in thinking as God things, and willing as God wills."
John Brown, Nineteenth-century Scottish theologian, quoted in J. Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness, p. 51.
I want to close by asking you two questions today:
1. Are you holy? I did not ask if you go to church. I did not ask if you call yourself a Christian. I did not ask if you had been baptized, or participated in the Lord’s Supper. I am asking you today, Are you holy?
2. Do you feel the importance of holiness like you should? I sometimes fear if Christ were walking bodily upon the earth today that the very churches that call upon His name would not be subject of His commendations, but of His condemnations. Could it be, that if Jesus stood in our midst today, he would say to us, “You are whitewashed tombs, clean on the outside, but with death on the inside.” “You are cups, spotless on the outside, but filled with garbage on the inside.”
