Good morning. Spring has sprung! Amen. We are going to spring right into our sermon series again which is called The Story, which is basically the story of God found in the Bible story. As I mentioned before, because of the amount of content, we have to do a high flyover of all the stories in the Bible, which means that we can’t spend a lot of time on any one particular book. Last week, we dove into the book of Judges. The person we talked about was the first female judge, Deborah.
Today, we are going to talk about the last judge and his name was Samuel. Basically, what we are really going to talk about is the transition from the period of judges over to the period of kings. We find that transition documented in the book of 1 Samuel. The book of 1 Samuel is obviously named after Samuel. The Samuel who was a judge but he was also a priest and a prophet. He heard from God and was the mouthpiece of God. We know from the very early ages that God had his hand on Samuel even as a young boy. The story goes that his mother Hannah was unable to conceive a child so year after year she would go to the tabernacle and meet with Eli and pray and offer sacrifices, but she couldn’t conceive of a child. Apparently, one day she went there and made a vow to God. Reading from 1 Samuel 1:11 she says “LORD Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.” It basically says she was going to give him over to the Lord for his work. After she conceived, she writes this phenomenal prayer back to God that we see in chapter 2. She brings little baby Samuel up to Eli and says he is yours. Train him up. So basically Eli becomes the mentor of Samuel. As the mentor he teaches Samuel some of the basics. He teaches him how to perform the priestly duties and what it is like to be a judge. And he teaches little Samuel how to hear the word of God.
We don’t know a whole lot about the early years of Samuel, but we do know Samuel grew in stature and favor with the Lord and with men. When you think about it, isn’t that what we would like all of our kids to do. Not just grow up in stature but grow up in the favor of Lord and then men. That is basically that vertical and horizontal thing going on there. Under the mentoring of Eli, Samuel was able to grow up into spiritual maturity. Although Eli did a good job raising up Samuel, he really didn’t do too good of a job of raising his two kids, Phinehas and Hophni. We don’t have time to look at it on the screen, but they were bad kids. They were actually working for Eli doing priestly functions. What happened was people would bring their offerings and they would steal the offerings form the people. When people complained, they would threaten physical violence on the people. Not only that, they would perform elicit sexual activity in the tabernacle with the women in the tabernacle. This was a bad time. This was a very dark time. Consistent with the theme we saw in Judges, people were doing evil in the eyes of the Lord big time. It had gotten all the way to the tabernacle. Consistent with the theme of Judges, we see when you have a situation like that, when people are doing evil, what would often happen is God would bring in some outside oppressors, some of the enemies of the people to deal with the people. Not in the sense to make their life miserable but just to show the people what their life is like outside of God. In this particular case, the people that God used against the Hebrew people to teach them a lesson were the Philistines. The Philistines were a bad people. They were very well armed and very aggressive. They would go after the Hebrew people unprovoked and harass them, slaughter them, and take them into slavery. The Israelites would fight back and try to defend themselves.
As the story goes, one day, they decided they were going to take matters into their own hands, and they are going to go up and try to fight the Philistines on their own. We find out in the early chapters that it didn’t work too well. In fact, 4,000 Hebrews were slaughtered on one particular day. As the story goes, all the surviving men go back to the camp and meet with the leaders of the tabernacle, the elders and the leaders of the different tribes, and they try to figure out what went wrong. I guess somebody suggest that maybe it had to do with the presence of God not being with them when they went into battle. Somebody says why don’t we bring the Ark of the Covenant with us this time. You may recall from earlier sermons that we talked about the Ark of the Covenant was the fancy, ornate cabinet that was basically used to hold the remaining portions of the Ten Commandments, some manna from the desert, and Aaron’s staff. It was believed that God’s presence would surround this Ark. As logic goes, if we take the Ark with us into battle, we are going to have God with us. It is pretty good logic except unfortunately they had Eli’s two sons go with them and carry the Ark. They were basically using it as some sort of a good luck charm. God would have nothing like that. He allowed the Philistines to pretty much demolish them. It goes on to say “The slaughter was very great. Israel lost thirty thousand foot soldiers. The ark of God was captured, and Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, died.” Apparently, one of the messengers came back and told Eli about the problem. He told him about his sons being killed and that was a bad thing. But after he told him the Ark of the Covenant was taken over by the Philistines, Eli dropped dead on the spot. Then the story goes on to say that Phinehas’ widow immediately went into labor, had the child and named the child Ichabod, which basically means the Glory of the Lord has departed. It was a very, very dark time during that latter period of the judges.
It was during this dark time that Samuel begins to rise up out of the shadows. He begins to make himself known. Samuel had spent so much time listening to God that he was very in-tune to what was happening here. He was very in-tune to God. He realized that the problem didn’t have to do with the Philistines. The problem had to do with the people who had a divided heart. They had one foot in with the tabernacle and God and another foot into the world and following idols and that sort of thing. So that is what Samuel does. He says here is your problem. You need to get rid of the idols. You need to do away with them. The people say we will do that. Samuel’s reply is “If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.” Then he goes on and calls together all the people for a time of fasting and prayer and repentance. All the tribes come together in this great assembly and they are confessing all their sins and doing all that sort of stuff. Samuel is receiving the confessions and making offerings up to the Lord. I guess word got out to the Philistines that this great assembly was going on out there and they saw it as an opportunity to do this massive attack on the Hebrew people. The Hebrew people got word of it and pleaded out to Samuel. They said please don’t stop the sacrifices. Don’t stop crying out to the Lord. And that is what Samuel did. He continued to cry out to the Lord. It says in 1 Samuel 7:10 “While Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle. But that day the LORD thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.” Basically, the Philistines for now were defeated. At that point, the story goes that Samuel set up some sort of rock called Ebenezer which means God’s help is with us. Then he pretty much went back to doing what judges do. They go around and travel the tribes like a circuit-type journey and they hear the disputes of the people and settle cases and do a little teaching and that sort of thing. Reading about chapter 7, we kind of get the impression that Samuel is getting ready to retire. He is settling down.
At about chapter 8, we see an interesting twist to the story of Samuel. Samuel is growing old and probably thinking he is getting near retirement so he puts his two boys into positions of judges. That wouldn’t be a bad thing except we learned that “But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.” Samuel’s kids really weren’t that much better than Eli’s kids. You have to imagine that this really bothered Samuel. He did everything he could. He walked with the Lord and I am sure he tried to create a Godly home and atmosphere. But for some reason, the kids didn’t turn out well. I imagine that some of you here could feel the same pain. Maybe you have had children that have since grown up and you provided them with a very Godly home and for some reason they took a different direction. We like to quote the verse out of Proverbs 22:6 that says “Train up a child in the way he will go and when he gets older he will not depart from it.” Unfortunately, some people take that as a promise and a guarantee. The Proverbs are not promises. They are wise sayings that are generally true, but there is no guarantee as many of you know. For whatever reason, Samuel’s kids had the opportunity to grow up and be Godly men but they didn’t. Where Samuel messed up is he took them and gave them an office of judge. Here you have the situation where Samuel is getting old. You have his sons, who are corrupt, becoming judges. So some of the leaders of Israel say this is an opportunity to shake the government up a little bit. They propose that maybe it is time to get rid of the system of judges and put on a system of kings. A monarchy. They say to Samuel “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.” To us, you are probably thinking what is the big deal. You go from a judge to a king. What is the difference? It is a big leap back then. The judges were just basically people that heard from God, settled disputes, and once in a while God would call them up to go into the military and lead the people and then go back to doing their own thing. A king was an autocrat. Somebody who has absolute authority and absolute control over the entire country. Would write the laws, administer the laws, judge the laws, delve out the penalties for violations and just have total, absolute say so in the comings and goings of the people. This is quite a shift. It is not really a bad thing. If you are familiar with the book of Deuteronomy, there is a portion in in where God tells Moses someday you are going to get your king. It is okay to have a king, but it is going to be a king that is under my terms. It is going to be a king that is going to have a heart that chases after me. It is going to be a king that walks according to my ways. It is going to be a king that lays the foundation for the future king named Jesus Christ. We will look more into that next week. Anyway, they wanted a king and they wanted a king on their terms. They wanted a king because everybody else had a king. All the other nations had a king. Why can’t we have a king? They wanted to be like the nations around them. We know what happens sometimes when you want to be like the people around you and some of those people aren’t too good, you can have disastrous results. That is what happened to the nation of Israel. That was their problem. They came too close to the culture. They wanted to be like the nations around them so they would get caught up in idol worship and all that kind of stuff. Their motives were not pure.
Samuel is probably feeling a little frustrated and distraught. He is thinking they are rejecting me and pushing me off to the old folks’ home and they are not even giving my sons a chance. So what does he do? He goes and complains to God. He says God I don’t know what is going on here. I don’t get it. Why do they want a king? God says “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.” In other words, Samuel, get over it. It is not about you. They didn’t reject you. They rejected me. Me being the God who was the one who originally rose up the people and called Abraham and told Abraham that he would be a blessing to all people. The God who pulled the people out of slavery and allowed them to be pulled away from the obsessive arm of the pharaoh and walk through the Red Sea to safety. That is the King that they are rejecting. Even though they are rejecting him, God is thinking maybe that is okay. Before I give them a king, why don’t you go and let them know what it is like to live under a king. So that is what Samuel did. He went out and talked to the people. He said you don’t know what you are asking. You get a king in place and immediately he is going to want an army, which means he is going to take your youngest and oldest men and pull them into military service, not voluntarily. They are going to have to go. The ones that don’t go he is going to make them work the fields. Then he is going to take your wives and make them cooks and servants. Then he is going to take a portion of your flocks. He is going to take a portion of all your possessions. He is going to take all your stuff. Their answer was so what. “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 to fight our battles.” In their minds, having a king in place will solve their problems. The problems of needing protection 24 hours a day. The problems of having their welfare being taken care of. Being kept nice and secure. Having food when they need it. This king is going to solve all our problems.
Isn’t that a bit like it is today? I was thinking about the Dominican Republic trip. While we were down there, one thing that is really clear is that the people have a lot of problems. You walk down the street and you see trash everywhere. The minute you land there and begin to go into the city, you see all these hotels. They are not really hotels. They are basically houses of prostitution is what they are. You just drive your car in and drive your car out. Do your thing and you are done. The sewer system is a complete wreck so much so that you can’t even flush the toilet all the time. You are limited to what you can put in the toilet. There is no hot water. You always have to take a cold shower. The noise is absolutely unbelievable everywhere you go. Motorcycles and roosters and animals and sirens and all this perpetual noise. These are problems that, on the surface, seem like they could be fixed. I remember saying to my friend Jose can’t these be fixed. He says sure they can be fixed. We have the resources to fix these things, but the government leaders don’t want to fix them. Because if you fix those problems that involve the basic necessities of life, then the people begin to become enabled. Before long, they would be able to do things and feel in control of their lives. What would happen is we might lose control and they might get a hold of our corrupt government and change things and kick us out of office. They could change things, but the leaders don’t want them to change. The leaders will promise change just until they get voted into office. There are posters of politicians everywhere down there. They all have smiling faces and are all attractive people and they all make these promises. Then as soon as they get into the office they break them. Sound familiar? What is true in the Dominican Republic is obviously true in the United States. Every four years, we are going to vote for somebody that is promising change. What happens is after four years or eight years, I don’t think my life changed that much. Still unemployed. Still struggling. Paying too much for healthcare. Whatever it is. All that kind of stuff. I am not going to blame any politician. I am going to blame us because we think that one person is going to be able to change our life. A lot of times the problems we have are the problems that we caused ourselves. We want to think that someone is going to step into office and fix our problems. That is what they were thinking there.
To continue with the story, God said they want a new leader, they want a king, give them a king. Give them what they think they want just so they can realize that what they think they want is not what they really want. It is kind of like what we do with our kids sometimes. Kids badger us over and over. I want this. I want a Mountain Dew at midnight. We give it to them and then they end up puking it up in the middle of the night. Sometimes you just have to give them the experience and let them do that to see that this isn’t really what they want. So they want a king and God says I will give you a king. His name is King Saul. King Saul is the first king. I don’t have time to get into a lot of detail about King Saul. We will talk a little bit more about him next week. One thing about King Saul that you should know is that King Saul was a guy who started out with phenomenal potential. He was a man that was anointed by Samuel. He was a man who was filled with the spirit of God. A man who started out so incredibly strong but ended up by the end of his years hitting a wall. Ending up so incredibly weak that he took his own life.
Although I don’t have time to go into it, I want to summarize in one story that kind of gives you the idea of what went wrong with Saul. It involves a group of people called the Amalekites. You may recall that the Amalekites were a people group that were pretty mean. God didn’t like them. Moses didn’t like them. They Amalekites were the people that, when Moses came across the Red Sea with all the people and got into the desert, attacked them brutally. It was an incredibly brutal war. That was the war where Moses was told to hold his arms up high and you will be defeating the Amalekites and if you put them down you are going to lose. So Moses had his brothers and leaders hold his hands up. They ended up defeating the Amalekites in a mighty way. Before God was done, he said I want you to write something down Moses. Write down in your journal that someday I am going to wipe the Amalekites off the face of the planet. I am going to do it through King Saul. 1 Samuel 15 we get that story. We get the story of where Samuel goes up to Saul. He says I have an assignment for you. Remember those Amalekites that harassed Moses and the people? I want you to annihilate them. I want you to take 200,000 of your best men and go after them. You wipe them off the earth. Kill every man, woman, child, animal. Take everything. Destroy everything. Don’t leave anything intact. Here is Saul going sure why not. I like to fight. He goes and gets 200,000 of his best men. He beats the Amalekites, but he commits a grievous sin. Instead of killing Agag the king, he takes him as a prisoner and then instead of destroying all the stuff he was supposed to destroy, he destroyed the bad stuff. He kept the good stuff for himself and for his men. Samuel finds out about this and is really mad. He says what have you done? Here Saul begins to make all these excuses. I did what I was supposed to do. “I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal.” A couple things to take note of here. Flat out he lied because he did not follow the instructions. He took back the good stuff. Then he tried to make an excuse. He says I just took the good stuff so I can offer it as sacrifice for your God. He didn’t say offer a sacrifice to my God or our God. He said your God. In other words Samuel, this really isn’t my God anymore. Right then, things were about to get really bad because Samuel says something to him to let him know he was in trouble. He says “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.” In other words, I really don’t care about those sacrifices that you are offering. What I care about is your obedience. You do what I say to do. Then he basically goes on to say I hate to say it Saul but your kingdom is about to end. He says “You have rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD has rejected you as king over Israel!” In other words, you are about to be out of there. I am about to replace you with a brand new king. The king’s name is King David. That is what we will read about next week.
In closing, that is pretty much a good part of the first story of Samuel. We will read more about Samuel next week. Hopefully, you have learned some lessons. I don’t have time to go into any great detail on the lessons because of the time constraints, but you learned things like you should train up your kids the way they should go. You should try to create a Godly home and sometimes even give them to opportunity to try things just to experience that they really don’t want those things. Hopefully, you learn that we can’t get too close to the world. We can’t try to look like the world. But really the main thing I want you to learn and this is where you need to listen up. When you think about this story and the stories in Judges and you think about the people, the main problem with the people had nothing to do with their enemies. The problem with the people had to do with their heart. It was a matter of the heart. They couldn’t get it. They couldn’t understand the fact that they had a divided heart. One foot in the world and one foot with God. They thought that somebody else would solve their problems. It got me thinking again about the Dominican Republic. There was an amazing conversation I had following a business meeting. We had a gentleman speak from the United States and speak on the impact of noise in the culture and on particularly hearing of individuals. It was a good presentation. At the end, the people just loved it. All these questions were being asked. I was in the background. I wasn’t part of the presentation. We were back there talking. My friend Jose about 20 minutes into the conversation comes up and says I want you to meet the mayor. So I met the mayor of Santiago and I talked to him. He said he had something to say to you. Keep in mind, the theme of this trip was renovation of the heart. The mayor, who is not a Christian, maybe a borderline catholic, says to Jose, and I am paraphrasing, he says this is all good stuff, but I think the most important thing is to get the Dominican People to realize that the problem with noise at its root is a problem of the heart. The more I thought about it, I said that is absolutely right. What they did is they have so much noise and that noise becomes a covering of their heart. Or a thing that prevents from having to deal with the interior life. The noise blocks out the noise that is coming from their heart. That was a revelation. All those problems cannot be solved until they first get past the noise and begin to be able to go into the quiet place in their heart and say what is going on here. Why do I have all these problems? That was my best revelation of the whole trip. I began to think what is true in the Dominican Republic is probably true in America. When you think about it, maybe a good chunk of the problems we have in the United States have to do with heart issues. People have a divided heart. They just quit following God. They are only following God half-heartedly. If that is true for the United States, it is probably true for Pittsburgh. If it is true for Pittsburgh, it is probably true for Bellevue. If it is true of Bellevue, it might be true of Bellevue Christian Church. If it is true of Bellevue Christian Church, it might be true of any believer sitting in the pew today. In other words, a lot of you have problems. Big problems because I have heard them. Some of you aren’t afraid to share your problems. Even though you like sharing your problems, you don’t want to hear the solution. The solution, as we see from the passage today, is a heart issue. It is found in the heart. All these things, whether you have lust issues, finance issues, relationship issues, and all this stuff. You want to blame the people around you. You want to blame the government. You need to get inside and look at your heart. The heart is the wellspring of life. The heart is where everything is located. That is abundantly clear. What I am saying is just like the story of 1 Samuel; you don’t go looking for somebody to solve your problems. As good as a Dave Ramsey seminar is, if you have a financial issue, Dave Ramsey is not going to solve your problem because a lot of times for some people it is just a heart issue. You haven’t decided in your heart that your money is actually God’s money. If you have a lust issue or an addiction. You want to go out and find the right therapist or the right counselor or get the right drug or whatever it is. Maybe the president will solve all your problems. Maybe a king. You realize they aren’t going to solve your problems. Only you can solve your problems because your problem is inside of you. It is not outside of you. Until you figure that out, you are going to live in misery. I have nothing else to say for that. I can’t solve your problems. All I can do is direct you to the solution. The solution is not found in any man, woman, king, president or whatever. The solution is taking yourself off the throne and putting The King back on the throne. I can’t give you another answer. Some of you don’t want to hear it. Some of you don’t want to do it. That is what it is about. Once you place Christ as king of your life and you begin to center your life around that king, you will change. You say I go to church, I pray. Big deal. That is not what it is about. Going to church, serving in the community, and doing these things are all good stuff and nice stuff to do as a Christian, but it isn’t the total answer. It is an issue that goes on inside. It is an issue of placing Christ back on the throne. It is an issue of obedience. As you go into your quiet time, which I suspect a lot of you never get to. I know because it is hard. A lot of you use people and noise and business as a mask to your heart. You don’t want to get in the heart because it is a scary place. You get in the heart and God is going to talk to you. He is not going to talk to you through Samuel. He is going to talk to you through the Spirit of God. If you pay attention, he is going to say you need to stop that stuff. You need to quit sleeping with that guy. You need to put down that drug. You need to put down that bottle. Whatever it is, you need to stop it. Some people say that is nice. I don’t want to stop it. That is between you and God. When you decide to hear the Spirit of God and you simply just stop it, which many of you can do, then what happens is you walk in obedience and your heart begins to change, and overnight those black blotches start coming out and pretty soon you are walking in line with God and your heart begins to take on the heart of God. It is at that point that you can identify with the words of Samuel when he said “To obey is better than sacrifice and to heed is better than the fat of rams.” Let us pray.
