Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church Podcast,
where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.
My name is Pastor Josh, and I want to thank you for listening to
this podcast.
I hope that this podcast can be a blessing to you and strengthen
you in the word of God.
Now, come along.
Let's look into the Bible and see what God has for us here today.
All right, we're going to go ahead and continue our Bible study
here in First Samuel.
So if you want to follow along in your Bibles, we're in First Samuel,
chapter nine.
And if you've been with us now for a while, you know what we've
been doing.
We've been tracking this book of the Bible verse by verse.
And really the first eight chapters have a focus on a man named
Samuel.
Obviously, at the very beginning, we know that his mom,
Hannah, was praying for a child, and God granted her a child
in his grace and in his mercy.
And so Samuel was committed to the Lord.
And so again, the first.
Really, the first eight chapters is dealing with Samuel and
his relationship with God for the most part.
And now here in chapter nine, we see somewhat of a transition from
the focus being on Samuel to the focus being on a guy named Saul.
And if you remember, back in chapter eight, the people were crying
out and saying essentially this.
We want our own king.
We want a king like everybody else.
If you remember back in verse, or even all the way back in, at the
beginning of the chapter First Samuel, chapter eight, they demand
a king.
And they say, we want one just like everybody else.
We want to be just like the world.
We want to have a king like all the other pagan nations.
And Samuel warns Israel, he says, israel, if you want this, this
is what you're going to get.
And God has patience with the people.
He gives them a second chance.
But essentially they.
They say, no, we want a king of our own.
We want to be just like all the other nation nations.
That's verse five.
At the very end of verse five of chapter eight, they said, we want
a king to judge us like everybody else.
And so the desire to have a king was not a bad desire, but the
motivation behind the desire was the wrong thing.
The.
The motivation was this.
We want to be like the world.
We want to be like everybody else.
And so God in his patience, God and his mercy, allows for them
to essentially have their own king.
Now, leading up to this point, all the way from the very beginning,
all the way up to this point, it essentially was what we call a
theocracy.
God was king.
There were Individuals that were judges.
There were individuals that somewhat gave some guidance when
it came to spiritual matters, like prophets and such, like Samuel.
But up until this point, Israel had not had a human king.
And so they cried out, God gave them what they wanted.
This is indicative of what we see in Romans chapter one.
If you remember back in Romans chapter one, in our study in Romans,
the Bible says that there's going to be individuals that want
what they want and eventually God gives them over to what they
want.
But I want you to see a verse in the New Testament that kind of
parallels, I believe 1st Samuel chapter 9.
And that's found in 2nd Timothy chapter 2.
And so I think this is important for us to know because
even in Israel's rebellion, even in Israel's selfishness, even
in Israel's pride, God still extends mercy to them.
He still is faithful.
He still gives them an opportunity to have a king.
And a lot of people will look at the life of Saul and say, well,
Saul didn't have a chance.
But we see Saul having many chances by the Lord to obey him and
to ultimately be a good king.
And so in the midst of Israel's rebellion, God still gives
them a chance.
God still gives them mercy.
And so in 2 Timothy chapter 2, I think that this is so important
for us to know because sometimes we think that if when we
make a mistake, God's just going to let us go, we when we make
a mistake as God's children, that he's just going to forget about
us.
But in second Timothy chapter 2, verse 13, it says this.
If we believe not, or in the, in the concept of the original language,
it's this, if we lack faith, if we struggle in believing what
the Lord gives us, not necessarily in salvation, but in
the case of trusting him on a day to day basis, he says, yet he
abideth faithful.
Meaning this, when we struggle, when we're faithless, when
we doubt God, when we have our own pride, when we have our own selfishness,
it says here, he still is faithful.
So the way that you could summarize that thought is this.
Even when we're not faithful, God is faithful.
Even when Israel was not faithful, God was faithful.
Even when a believer is unfaithful, God is still faithful.
And it says there, why not?
Because we're great people, not because we deserve it.
But it says here, he cannot deny Himself, meaning God cannot
go against his character.
God is faithful in his character.
He's not just faithful because we're faithful.
He's faithful because ultimately that's part of his character.
And so therefore, Israel is not faithful to the Lord.
They want to go out and they want to have what the world has.
The Bible likens it in the Old Testament to spiritual adultery.
Israel goes against the Lord and seeks after the world.
And so God could have just cut the.
The nation of Israel away and said, you want your own king?
Fine, have a Canaanite king.
But no, he's faithful.
And he allows for a man named Saul to be selected.
And then Saul could have.
We're going to see this in the study with Saul.
Saul had every opportunity to follow God, but.
And he starts out really good.
He starts out in a good place.
But the story of Saul is essentially a story of someone who
starts in a good place, but yet just devolves into a place of
brokenness and destruction.
And he gets to a place at the very end where.
Where he's empty, where he's spiritually in darkness and evil
takes over.
And so we're going to study the life of Saul here, starting in
chapter number nine.
So let's look at it here.
We're going to go through it as much as we can tonight.
And a lot of this becomes what we consider in the Bible to be descriptive
passages.
What do I mean by that?
Well, there's some passages in the Bible that are prescriptive,
meaning do this or don't do this.
So, for example, you know, love God with all your heart, soul,
mind, and strength.
That would be prescriptive.
But then we have other passages of scripture that are considered
to be descriptive, meaning it's just describing what happened.
And that's what a lot of this is.
And so some of this can be monotonous.
And so some of you are not into history or you're not into records.
This might get a little bit boring, but I'm going to try my best
to make the words come off the page.
I'm going to try to see if we can all see the message here behind
chapter number nine.
So, first one, it says this.
Now, there was a man of Benjamin.
Now we'll stop there.
This is describing Saul, and it says what tribe he is from.
And Remember, there's the 12 tribes of Israel.
And each tribe has its own significance.
The tribe of Benjamin was a very small tribe.
It was not going to be usually considered by most people at the
time to be the tribe that was the most powerful tribe.
But there's also other aspects of the tribe of Benjamin which most
of you may or may not know.
But eventually there's some people in the New Testament that
you might know that are the tribe of Benjamin, another Saul,
who eventually becomes Paul.
He was of the tribe of Benjamin.
And so you'll see that that phrase throughout Scripture.
So it says that he's from the tribe of Benjamin, whose, whose name
was Kish and son of Abel, the son of Zeror, the son of Becket,
the son of a Benjamite, a mighty man of power.
And he had a son whose name was Saul.
And so this is what we would consider to be the physical description
of Saul which when we see him described we would say, yes, of course,
that would be the king.
And, and remember the contrast between the people's king and God's
king.
We're going to see a description here of Saul who what
we will see here will be the people's king.
The people say this, this guy looks like a king.
And then eventually we're going to get to a guy named David
who was God's king, not the people's king.
And David is not going to be someone who people would pick out
as king.
Actually, if you remember, David's own family forgot about him.
All the other brothers lined up and David was out in the field
and, and again we'll get to that later on.
But this is a description of Saul.
And what we see here in this description is that he is a very
impressive, good looking man, says, and he had a son whose name
was Saul, a choice young man and a goodly, meaning he's of good
looks.
And there was not among the children of Israel goodlier person
than he, meaning he looked the best.
He was the best.
He was the choice individual.
From his shoulders and upward, he was higher than any of the people.
And so this speaks to his physical stature.
Now we don't know exactly how tall he is, even though there's a
lot of commentators that have some guesses about how tall Saul
is.
But what we do know is that he's taller than everybody else.
And so regardless of his actual height, we do know that he's
taller than everybody.
So that would bring some sense of power.
And when people would look at him, they would notice that he had
that good looking appearance.
And so Saul looked like a great king.
And if being king over Israel was all about image, which for many
people it was, Saul was the man for the job.
But we do know that God is actually looking at other things.
We know that God doesn't look on the outward appearance.
God looks on the heart.
But here we see a profile of someone who fits the bill for the
people.
We go on and See really what his situation is in this case.
And.
And we actually see that at this point in time, Saul is a picture
of the people of Israel.
And so Saul would be an individual representation of the
spiritual aspect of the whole nation at this point.
And.
And so from the outside, Israel looks very powerful.
From the outside, Israel looks successful.
But on the inside, we know that spiritually they're decaying
because they're desiring their own path.
And essentially what we see here is that Saul had lost his dad's
donkeys, okay?
And so he's basically walking lost.
He doesn't know where to turn.
That's a great picture of how Israel was at this point, trying
to find some kind of hope, trying to find some sort of satisfaction
in losing something.
So verse three, in the asses of Kish, Saul's father, were lost.
And Kish said to Saul his son, take now one of these servants with
thee and arise.
Go seek the asses.
And he passed through Mount Ephraim and passed through the land
of Cilicia, but they found them not.
So they're searching, they're looking, they have.
Eventually we're going to see here that they lose hope.
They don't know where to find them.
And so they passed through the land of Shailen, and they.
There they were not.
And he passed through the land of the Benjamites, but they found
them not.
And when they had come to the land of Zoof, Saul said to his servant
that was with him, come and let us return, lest my father leave
caring for the asses and take thought for us.
And so in this case, basically what.
What Saul says is that, hey, we're.
We can't figure this out.
We can't find our way.
We don't know where to go.
And so basically, Saul is in a state of frustration.
And we see that happening a lot with Saul throughout his life.
His character trait of anything, you could say a lot of
things that would characterize Saul, but one of those things would
be he's frustrated.
He can't figure out the right way to go.
And so.
But God is still working.
And we see God's hand of providence on the life of Saul, even
in the life of the donkeys, actually, because we all kind of
aligns him to come and find a fellow named Samuel, which you guys
are all familiar with.
So let's look at verse number six.
His servant actually gives him some advice.
And he said unto him, behold, now there is a city, a man of God,
and he is an honorable man.
And so he's referencing Samuel.
All that he saith cometh surely to pass.
Now let us go thither.
Per adventure, he can show us our way that we should go.
So you see the irony here.
In verse 6, you have Saul and you have his servants who are looking
for these lost donkeys.
So it's a material need that they're looking for.
They.
They think that Samuel could be the guy who tell them where the
donkeys are.
So they're going to Samuel, a prophet of God, to give them direction
on their material loss.
Now, really, what they should be doing is going to Samuel for spiritual
advice, but that's not what they're doing.
But the irony of what is being said here is that it is true.
Samuel could show them the way to go, but not necessarily the way
to find their donkeys, even though he does.
But he should show them the way to go, to follow the Lord.
Because Saul needs guidance when he becomes king.
Verse 7.
Then said Saul to his servant, but behold, if we go again, we see
salt here.
I want you to see this.
Saul is always focused on the material.
He says, if we go, what.
What does he say?
What shall we bring the man?
For the bread is spent in our vessels, and there is not a present
to bring the man of God.
What have we?
He says, how could we go to this guy?
We don't even have anything to give him.
Remember, he's thinking, like, what could we give him?
It's kind of like the whole idea of, I give you something, you
give me something.
And that's, again, that's not how God works.
Ultimately, God gives us everything, and all we come to him
in brokenness is.
Is in humility, saying, lord, I need you.
But in this case, it was customary of the time to come to
anybody for advice.
You would want to bring something with you as a gift.
And so you could look at this as just, hey, Saul's trying to be,
you know, nice guy.
Also, you could look at Saul thinking that his focus is only on
the material.
I don't have anything to give him.
So let's see what.
What happens next.
Verse 8.
And the servant answered Saul again and said, behold, I have here
at hand the fourth part of a shekel of silver that will I give
to the man of God to tell us our way.
So what we see here in this case is that they're expecting to
pay Samuel for his prophetic services.
And so the.
The servant says, hey, I've actually got something here.
I've got some money.
And so I think we can bring that to him.
So that's what they do.
Verse 9.
Before time in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, thus
he spake, come, let us go to see the seer.
For he that is now called a prophet was before time called a
seer.
So basically what we see here is that if there is a term seer in
the Old Testament, in this particular case, it's talking about
a prophet.
And that idea would be that the prophet and the seer are interchangeable.
The prophet not only professes the word of God, proclaims the word
of God, but also the prophet would see the way that God is working.
So he says, Samuel is a seer.
It's not that Samuel has the supernatural power in himself, but
because of his relationship with God, he's able to essentially
give the guidance of the Lord.
And that's what he's talking about here.
So the word seer is.
Is essentially interchangeable with.
With prophet.
So, so we know that that might be the case.
And so they're.
They're coming to consult a prophet, and they're going to try
to see if he knows where their donkeys are.
Verse 10.
Then said Saul to his servant.
Well said.
He said, that's a good idea.
Come, let us go.
So they went unto the city where the man of God was.
So they think that they're coming to see Samuel for this help
in finding donkeys, where we ultimately know that God is directing
them to Samuel to find out that Saul is going to be the next
king or the first king.
So.
Verse 11.
And as they went up to the hill to the city, they found young
maidens going out to draw water and sentence them.
Is the seer here?
And they said unto them, and said, he is.
Behold, he is before you.
Make haste now.
For he came today to the city.
And for there is a sacrifice of the people today in the high place.
So they're like, you just missed them.
Hurry up, go find them.
Verse 13.
As soon as ye be come into the city, ye shall straightway find him
before he go up to the high place to eat.
For the people will not eat until he comes, because he doth bless
the sacrifice.
And afterwards they eat that be bidden.
Now therefore get you up, and for about this time ye shall find
him.
So they go.
Verse 14.
And they went up to the city.
And when they were come into the city, behold, Samuel came out
against them, and for to go up to the high place.
Now the Lord had told Samuel in his ear a day before Saul came,
so he's A this is interesting because we actually find out that
God's working ahead of all this.
And I think this is another point that we could take on a theological
side of things, is that when we think that we're right in the
middle of it, God's already ahead of us.
I know there's been times in my life, and probably in your life,
that you could say, I didn't know that God was working behind
the scenes, but he was.
I didn't know that God was working ahead of me, but he was.
And that's the case here.
Saul has no idea that God has talked to Samuel about this.
But we see here, because we have the blessing of Scripture, that
God had already come and talked to Samuel.
And I like.
I like the way that it mentions it here.
Verse 15, it says, now the Lord had told Samuel in his ear a
day before.
So the original Hebrew has the idea of God came and unclog Samuel's
ears and filled him with this information.
So God spoke to Samuel prior to this, and he said, tomorrow about
this time, I will send thee a man out of the land of Benjamin,
and thou shalt anoint him to be captain over my people Israel,
that he may save my people out of the hand of the Philistines.
I'm going to stop right there because many of you know that Saul
is.
Isn't a great king.
He has some high points, but Saul essentially is a man of himself,
and he fails in many cases.
But we do know that God has a plan for Saul, and the plan was for
him to have victory over the Philistines.
And we know that Saul did lead that.
And so I think, again, that's a picture of God's faithfulness.
Even in the midst of our unfaithfulness, God is still working
and giving us opportunities to have victories.
And so he does that.
And he says, this is my plan for Saul.
For I have looked upon my people because their cry is, come
unto me.
And I just see here really an example of God's faithfulness and
patience and mercy with people who did not know what was best for
them.
Israel was pleading with God for something.
And eventually God says, okay, I will give you that.
But even in the midst of that, we know there's a verse in Romans
8, Romans 8, 28, that God works all things together for good.
Now, I think that that principle can be seen right here,
that even in Israel's bad decision in wanting a human king,
God can still use that for his good.
And I think that's also an idea that we can take in our own
life that we shouldn't want to mess up, we shouldn't try to mess
up.
But the grace and the mercy is that when we do mess up, God can
use those good decisions or those bad decisions for good.
I should say he can use good decisions, of course, but he also
can use bad decisions.
And, and I think all of us probably in our life could say, well,
I didn't draw it up that way.
I definitely know that that wasn't God's will for me to do these
things.
But at the end, God can work those out for good.
And I hope that we all can take, you know, comfort and solace
in the fact that we don't have to be perfect.
Even though we should strive to follow God in every way that we
possibly can.
I think that all of us should strive to be obedient and have a
godly lives.
But at the same time, when we do make a mistake, God can revitalize,
he can renew, he can take ashes and turn them into beauty.
And that's what we see here in this case is that even Israel's desire
to have this king of their own outside of the control of God was
not going to be the case.
Even though they wanted their own king, it was still going to be
the under their control and ultimately the allowance of God.
And God allows for this to happen.
And God actually does some degree ordains for this to happen.
And so I think that's important for us to note in our lives
that if we think we've done too much to break God's will in our
life, we haven't.
Because God can use those bad decisions for his ultimate good.
And that's what he does here in this case.
He says they, they're crying out, I hear them.
But even in their bad decision, I'm giving them something
in grace.
Verse 17.
And when Samuel saw Saul, the Lord said unto him, behold the man
who I spake of, spake to thee of this same shall reign over my
people.
So, so God obviously identifies Saul as the man that,
that Samuel would eventually anoint.
But things have to happen before that.
And so God is working ahead.
He identifies Saul.
Verse 18.
Then Saul drew near to Samuel in the gate and said, tell me, I
pray thee, where the seer's house is.
So obviously Samuel knows who it is, but Saul doesn't.
And Samuel answered Saul and said, I am the seer.
Go up before me unto the high place, for ye shall eat with me today
and tomorrow I will let thee go, and will tell Thee all that is
in thine heart.
And so I, I find this super interesting because again, Saul is
coming to Samuel for a material need, but he's going to
leave the occasion with Samuel, as it says here, and God's
going to reveal what's in the heart of Saul and ultimately reveal
what God's plan is for him.
And so we're going to see verse 20.
And as for thine asses that were lost three days ago, set not
thy mind on them.
Now, this is kind of like in, I don't know if you guys ever seen,
like a movie and, you know, someone knows something that the
other person doesn't know, and they mention it, they're like, wait,
how did you know that I was looking for the donkeys?
That's essentially what happens here.
Saul never tells Samuel that he's looking for donkeys yet, but
Samuel knows.
So Samuel says, hey, just come back and I'm going to let you know
where those donkeys are.
And he.
And he knows how long they were actually gone for.
So this shows the.
The omnipotence, but also the omniscience of God.
God is all powerful, but God is all knowing.
God knows everything.
God's ahead of us.
This reminds me of.
Of many occasions in scripture where God knew what was on the heart
of the individual before the individual shared that with him.
And so he says, and on whom is all the desire of Israel?
Is it not on thee and on all thy father's house?
And so Samuel goes, hey, I'll tell you where your.
Your donkeys are.
But also I'm going to tell you that all of Israel is resting on
you.
That.
That here.
He says, is it not on thee and on all thy father's house the desire
of Israel?
And Saul doesn't know how to take this.
You can look at this from a few different perspectives.
Some people think that verse 21 indicates Saul's humility.
And that could be the case.
Maybe Saul had not had his ego filled yet, and he's still a very
humble guy.
Or it could just be Saul trying to pass the buck off.
But Saul basically says, am not I a Benjaminite of the smallest
of the tribes of Israel?
He says, why?
Why would all of Israel want me?
What's the big deal with me?
And he says, my family, the least of all the families of the
tribe of Benjamin, Wherefore then speakest thou so to me?
So he's like, why would you talk to me this way?
I'm not that important.
Now if you do go back, because it Just says in verse one that his
dad's a mighty man of power and that, that Saul is a choice man.
So it is kind of incongruent basically to see Saul respond this
way.
And so we don't know the heart of Saul necessarily, other than the
fact that he could be being very humble here or he could be just
trying to say, like, I don't really want to share what I am or
who I am.
Verse 22.
And Samuel took Saul his servant and brought them into the
parlor and made them to sit in the cheapest place among them that
were bidden, which were about 30 persons.
So this is important as well because, you know, even in our culture
today, we understand sitting in the choice seats, right?
And so I as, interestingly enough, I saw a, a recent post.
It was a picture.
It was somewhere in England they were selling, I think it was
England.
Might have been, it might have been in the United States early on.
But it was a picture of when a church used to basically rent out
pews.
So you had to pay money for where you were going to sit on Sunday
morning.
And I was so interested to see where all the most expensive seats
were because I thought maybe they were up front, but that wasn't
the case.
It wasn't up front.
It wasn't in the very back, even though it obviously wasn't a
Baptist church, because then that would have been the, the high
price seats.
I, I can say that because when I grew up, I sat on the back rows.
But, but actually it was like right in the middle.
It was like right in the middle area.
But either way, but, but we all know that when you go to a place,
maybe going to a sports game or maybe you're going to.
And even a meal, and you're sitting in the, in the big spot,
the big ticket spot, that's exactly what Saul is given by Samuel.
He says, hey, come sit in the nice spot.
And this would have been a place of honor.
This would have been a place of recognition.
And so Saul was given a special portion.
And again, I, I think we could just look at this as descriptive
and go, okay, he sat in the nice seat.
But what does that mean?
I think that what that means is still.
God is still giving Saul every opportunity, the taste of the blessings
of being part of this opportunity to serve him.
He says, hey, you can have all of this.
You can, you can sit in seat of honor.
You can, you can focus on this opportunity to serve me.
And so Saul was given a special portion.
And I believe that he had every opportunity to serve God.
And we're going to see that.
That he doesn't.
So moving Forward here, verse 23.
And Samuel said unto the cook, bring the portion which I gave thee
of which I said unto thee, set it by thee.
So he says, give him the good food and cook.
And the cook took up the shoulder and that was upon it, and
set it before Saul.
So that's like he gives him the best cut of meat.
And Samuel said, behold, that which is left, set it before thee
and eat.
For unto this time hath it been kept for thee since I said,
I have invited the people.
So Saul did eat with Samuel that day.
So this just describes essentially their.
Their meal that they had together, this opportunity to see
this special blessing.
Verse 25.
And when they were come down from the high place into the city,
Samuel communed with Saul upon the top of the house.
So Samuel isolates Saul and he's now going to give him the truth.
He's going to give him.
What we're going to see here is called the Word of God.
And, and this is obviously not something that any of us are probably
going to experience.
We're not going to experience being called by God to be the king
of Israel, but we all have an opportunity to hear the word of God
in.
In the capacity of the word of God, the Bible, or through preaching
or through teaching.
So this is Saul's opportunity to take in what God wants for him.
Verse 26.
And they arose early, and it came to pass about the spring of
the day that Samuel called Saul to the top of the house, saying,
up that I may send thee away.
And Saul arose, and they went out, both of them, he and sought
Samuel abroad.
And as they were going down to the end of the city, Samuel said
to Saul, bid the servant pass on before us.
He says, I want to have you alone.
And he passed on, but stand thou still a while that I may show
thee the word of God.
And so that's where this chapter ends.
Samuel, no doubt, at this point tells Saul about Israel's desire
for a king, that.
That God had allowed for Saul to be that king.
And so Samuel is going to introduce essentially the official
anointing to Saul here and then.
So we're going to talk about next week.
We're going to talk about Saul's anointing and how even in
the midst of Israel's rebellion and even in Saul's materialism
and his selfishness, God still allows for the anointing to happen.
In the anointing, by the way, the anointing of oil in the Old Testament
is a picture of the Holy Spirit being placed upon an individual's
life, even though in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit did not
entwell believers.
When we so give you a quick theological lesson, the New Testament
tells us after Pentecost that after we trust in Jesus as our Savior,
the Holy Spirit indwells us, meaning he comes into our hearts,
he comes into our lives, he indwells us, he's within us, and
that cannot be taken away.
But in the Old Testament, that isn't the typical norm of what would
happen.
We would see indications that the.
It says in the Old Testament that the Spirit of God would come
upon people.
And so it wouldn't be a permanent indwelling of the Spirit
as much as it was at what we would call temporary moments where
God would come on them in the midst of obedience.
But what we will see that even in some cases that.
That in First Samuel, that Saul had times when God's power was
working through him.
But more often than not, Saul chooses to do his own thing and follows
his own path.
And so when we see Saul here being anointed by God, don't think
that he was saved here and then eventually lives in sin and
lost his salvation and God is not faithful to him.
No, that's.
That's not what happens.
Because the Bible says that initially every believer is saved
through faith, we essentially will see a big debate on whether
or not Saul is in heaven or not at the end of his life.
There's a lot of debate on whether or not Saul was saved.
Saul was not saved.
We don't necessarily know for sure.
There's some speculation on, on both sides.
But what I will say is that really indications in his life will
show that he does not live a life of faith.
And so though we can't know his heart, we can see the fruit of
his decisions.
And what we can ultimately see is that Saul has a very hard time
trusting in the plan of God.
And we'll see that unfolding throughout his life.
So what lessons can we take from this passage of Scripture, even
though it was predominantly a descriptive passage?
Well, I will say a few things.
I think the biggest lesson that we can see is that as second.
As second Timothy 2 told us, that there's still the faithfulness
of God in the midst of our struggles, in the midst of our trials,
even in the midst of our selfishness.
Now, it doesn't mean that God's going to continuously bless
us for bad decisions.
That's not the principle there.
The principle of sowing and reaping still lays out there even
in the New Testament.
But what we do see is that God does give us more than we deserve,
and he doesn't give us as much judgment as we do deserve.
Okay, so that's the idea.
That's mercy and grace.
The definition of grace is that God gives us something that
we don't deserve.
Okay?
The definition of mercy is that God withholds things that we
do deserve.
And what did Israel deserve?
Israel deserved punishment because of their rebellion.
They did not deserve God's presence and guidance.
But yet at the same time, God does all those things for them.
Why?
Because they were his people and he was with them.
And so today as believers, we have to understand that there are
people that even today teach that, you know, if you committed
this sin, you know, God's turned his back against you, that
you've lost your salvation, that God can't tolerate that type
of sin.
But what I will say is that the Bible tells us in many occasions,
in Romans 8, in other books of the Bible, in the Book of John, but
there is what we call internal security, that God holds us fast
and there's nothing that we can do to reject him after we come
to him in faith.
Yet there can be ups and downs and struggles in our life.
And so I would look to First Samuel, Chapter 9 as a testament
of God's faithfulness, even to people that are not faithful.
I would also see the difference between the appearance
of man and the heart of God.
The appearance of man was Saul.
He looked good, he was strong.
He was the man of the people.
So that must be the right choice.
But what we can see is that just because things look a certain
way on the outside and is.
And maybe an individual or teaching or a movement is appealing
to what we would consider the flesh.
It doesn't mean that it's a work of God.
Just because someone looks the part, just because.
Just because someone has someone that follows them, just because
someone is compelling in their message, that doesn't necessarily
mean that they're from God.
And we see that over and over again in Scripture.
So I say that because even in the book of Romans, it talks about
how there can be a lot of zeal, but there's no truth, there's
no knowledge.
And so for the life of Saul, we see that he does have success,
but ultimately he deviates from God's plan.
So first Samuel, chapter 10, we're going to come back next week
and we're going to look at his anointing, and that's a big event,
obviously.
And then we'll see some initial victories in the life of
Saul, and we'll see that Saul has some, some shortfalls, no doubt.
And then we will obviously, over time, integrate David into the
story.
And as David comes in the story, that's when we really see
Saul manifesting the sins of his heart from the past.
David was basically a vessel used to reveal really Saul's heart,
because David starts coming in and having successes.
And what happens is that Saul's ego, Saul's inadequacies,
his insecurities begin to be revealed when that happens.
And so when what I would say is this, and I think this is another
testimony of Saul's life.
Typically in our lives, the outward manifestation of sin is,
is precluded by an inward heart of sin that eventually will
build up to outward actions.
It's not like we just start acting out in these terrible, egregious
sins.
The Bible says, and Jesus says that usually what happens is the
sin of the mind and the sin of the heart that leads the sin of the
flesh.
And so what I would encourage us to think about is this, let's
not get to a place like Saul that we harbor darkness and bitterness
in our life for so long that eventually, when outward stimuli
come, our sin begins to manifest itself.
Really, the, the picture that God gives in throughout the whole
scriptures is essentially deal with sin as its infants, deal with
it in the seed stage so that it doesn't take root, so that it
doesn't grow.
And so these are all things that we're going to be talking about
in the life of Saul.
And so Saul didn't just overnight become the crazy guy that
we see throwing a spear at David and chasing David morning,
evening and night because he's jealous.
No, it starts really at the beginning of his life as we, we track
his story.
So that's a lesson for all of us to learn.
So I hope that you continue on in this series.
I know that there is a lot of media about David and then by, you
know, by extension, Saul, because Saul's portrayed always with
David.
And so I encourage you, you know, not to just shun media, but
what I'm saying is just be careful.
Like as you're studying anything with scripture, make sure
that what you're intaking with, you know, TV and videos and
all that kind of stuff, just make sure that that's not your standard.
Make sure that the scriptures are standard, and then go from there.
And then I think that that will help a lot when we're coming
to our interpretation of Scripture.
Thank you again for listening to the Middletown Baptist Church
Podcast.
I hope that this sermon has been a blessing for you.
If you would like to find out more information about our church
or this sermon, you can find us at middletownbaptistchurch.org
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Thank you so much.
God Bless.
Have a wonderful day.