Show Notes
1 Samuel 28
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Amen.
[00:00:08] Let's pray and ask that God would bless the reading, preaching of His Word.
[00:00:14] Our Heavenly Father, as we respond to your Word, we do recognize that there is much sin in us and that we desire for your forgiveness and your healing and your work in our lives according to your perfect promises to establish us in your good works.
[00:00:39] Lord, you know our lives. You know the trials that we are enduring, some of our own making, others not.
[00:00:49] Lord, in all these ways, in all these situations, we ask that yout would help us to look to youo.
[00:00:56] And that especially now as we come to the reading and preaching of your Word, we ask that you would illumine our hearts that we might understand and know and believe and do that which you have called us to do.
[00:01:12] Help us to have a greater sense of who you are, a more true sense of who you are, of the dangers that are all around us and the safety that we have from trusting in you.
[00:01:25] Lord, we look forward to hearing your Word. We ask that you would be with Me as I preach and that you would be at work not only with us individually, but with us as a body.
[00:01:38] We also pray for other churches, Lord, this morning and those who have already met around the world and who are yet to meet. We ask that your Word would go out into all the world, that many would follow you and be baptized in your name. We long and look forward to your coming again when all things will be brought into the consummate glory of your promises and life in you.
[00:02:05] We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:02:10] Well, let's remain standing and turn to 1st Samuel 28.
[00:02:28] We are coming close to the end of 1st Samuel.
[00:02:31] Next up is 2 Samuel. So we'll continue on.
[00:02:38] This morning we have a very interesting and memorable passage in which we have some really important things to understand and to apply in our own hearts. We'll put ourselves in the shoes of Saul, think about our own situations and our own lives before the Lord, and look forward and look to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, the perfect intercessor on our behalf.
[00:03:12] Let's hear God's Word.
[00:03:15] In those days, the Philistines gathered their forces for war to fight against Israel. And Achish said to David, understand that you and your men are to go out with me in the army. David said to Achish, very well, you shall know what your servant can do. And Achish said to David, very well, I will make you my bodyguard for life.
[00:03:37] Now Samuel had died and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him in Ramah, his own city.
[00:03:43] And Saul had put the mediums and the necromancers out of the land.
[00:03:48] The Philistines assembled and came and encamped at Shunem. And Saul gathered all Israel, and they encamped at Gilboa.
[00:03:58] When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly.
[00:04:06] And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams or by Urim or by prophets.
[00:04:14] Then Saul said to his servants, seek out for me a woman who is a medium that I may go to her and inquire of her.
[00:04:21] And his servants said to him, behold, there is a medium at Endor.
[00:04:26] So Saul disguised himself and put on other garments and went he and his two men with him, and they came to the woman by night. And he said, divine for me, buy a spirit and bring up for me whomever I shall name for you.
[00:04:41] The woman said to him, surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the necromancers from the land.
[00:04:49] Why then are you laying a trap for my life to bring about my death?
[00:04:54] But Saul swore to her, by the Lord, as the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.
[00:05:03] Then the woman said, whom shall I bring up for you? He said, bring up Samuel for me.
[00:05:09] When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice. And the woman said to Saul, why have you deceived me? You are Saul.
[00:05:17] The king said to her, do not be afraid. What do you see?
[00:05:20] And the woman said to Saul, I see a God coming up out of the earth.
[00:05:25] He said to her, what is his appearance?
[00:05:28] And she said, an old man is coming up, and he is wrapped in a robe.
[00:05:32] And Saul knew that it was Samuel. And he bowed with his face to the ground and paid homage.
[00:05:38] Then Samuel said to Saul, why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?
[00:05:43] Saul answered, I am in great distress, for the Philistines are warring against me. And God has turned away from me and answers me no more, either by prophets or by dreams.
[00:05:54] Therefore I have summoned you to tell me what I shall do.
[00:05:58] And Samuel said, why then, do you ask me, since the Lord has turned from you and become your enemy? The Lord has done to you as he spoke by me. For the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor David because you did not obey the voice of the Lord and did not carry out his fierce wrath against Amalek. And therefore the Lord has done this thing to you. This day, moreover, the Lord will Give Israel also with you into the hands of the Philistines. And tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me. The Lord will give the army of Israel also into the hand of the Philistines.
[00:06:40] Then Saul fell at once full length on the ground, filled with. With fear because of the words of Samuel.
[00:06:49] And there was no strength in him, for he had eaten nothing all day and all night.
[00:06:56] And the woman came to Saul, and when she saw that he was terrified, she said to him, behold, your servant has obeyed you. I have taken my life in my hand and have listened to what you have said to me. Now, therefore, you also obey your servant. Let me set a morsel of bread before you and eat, that you may have strength when you go on your way.
[00:07:16] He refused and said, I will not eat.
[00:07:20] But his servants, together with the woman, urged him, and he listened to their words.
[00:07:25] So he arose from the earth and sat on the bed.
[00:07:28] Now, the woman had a fatted calf in the house, and she quickly killed it. And she took flour and kneaded it and baked unleavened bread of it. And she put it before Saul and his servants, and they ate. Then they rose and went away that night.
[00:07:43] You may be seated.
[00:08:08] When we survey our lives, some of us can look in the past and see these moments that shock us at our stupidity, our foolishness, our rebellion.
[00:08:27] And we can say things like, I was such a mess.
[00:08:32] I was in a really bad place.
[00:08:35] My head was not anywhere close to being on straight.
[00:08:42] Perhaps you can see friends in your lives and make similar evaluations, family members that just break your heart.
[00:08:52] The same way you kind of pity your past self, you pity your friends. And, you know, like I just did, you sort of throw your hands up, metaphorically or literally, and just wonder what you can do when somebody gets into such a bad place where there's so much confusion, so much heartache, so many consequences, and they keep making bad choices one after another after another.
[00:09:21] And of course, it's. It's fair to say that some of us may be in that place right now in even an extreme way.
[00:09:30] And this morning is a call to you to turn away quickly, to recognize the situation that you're in and not find yourself in the same situation that Saul does.
[00:09:47] So this is Saul's situation.
[00:09:51] It breaks my heart. And I read this, and it's easy to relate to. In a way, it's incredibly sad. It's so dark in some ways, funny in kind of a dark way, the kind of tragic comedy that, you know, that we have in our world. I Don't know what to call that exactly. But you see this foolishness on display with Saul.
[00:10:23] Let's think about it for a second. What happens here?
[00:10:26] Well, as we've been thinking about through first, Samuel, it's another sinful shortcut, right? Saul needs something, he wants something and he can't get it.
[00:10:38] He's frustrated, he's trying stuff, he's doing things and he can't get what he wants, what he needs.
[00:10:47] And it's a big thing that he needs. This is not some, you know, minor thing. He wants to upgrade his car or whatever, right? The enemy of Israel, the enemy of God and his people, the Philistines, are encamped around him. They're threatening his life, they're threatening the lives of his people. He's the king. It's his job to protect, it's his job to save them. It's his job to deal with this situation. And he is afraid. We read in verse 5, lots of fear of Saul in this chapter. He's afraid here at the beginning his heart trembled greatly.
[00:11:30] So what does he do?
[00:11:32] Well, we read that he inquires of the Lord. This is something we frequently seen him not do throughout this book.
[00:11:40] Many opportunities where he could have and should have and didn't. Here he inquires the Lord and the Lord doesn't answer him. Verse 6 tells us by dreams.
[00:11:51] Either by dreams or Urim, which was a kind of law casting thing, or by prophets.
[00:11:58] And he doesn't know what to do.
[00:12:01] And so what does he decide to do?
[00:12:03] He decides to go to a medium whose job, self designated job, is to call up spirits from the dead so that people can commune with them, advise with them. All kinds of different things. In this case, Saul wants advice. And this still happens today. All the time there are people that you can go and find that purport to do this kind of thing.
[00:12:35] Often they have absolutely no contact with the dead.
[00:12:40] They have no contact with the spiritual world in any kind of way that a person might be paying for. Charlatans, hucksters, right? They're just turning a prophet using these kind of spiritual promises.
[00:12:57] But there are times, and here is one of them, where people do come into contact with the spiritual realm. There is a real spiritual realm and God allows that to happen here.
[00:13:10] And very interesting things happen as a result. This woman, interestingly, is surprised, even shocked and terrified at what she sees when she sees Samuel.
[00:13:22] Some people think that this is because she is one of those fakers. And all of a sudden the real thing happens and she is Scared.
[00:13:31] That's a possibility. Another possibility is that she recognizes Samuel, this prophet of God who has been judge over Israel, ruler over Israel, speaks on behalf of God, and she is disobeying God.
[00:13:49] Now her chief concern is obedience to the king.
[00:13:54] She doesn't want to get in trouble.
[00:13:56] And the narrator has told us ahead of time that Saul previously had done a really good thing. He'd done a good thing as the king of the Lord. He had cast the mediums and the necromancers out of the land, right? And so when Saul comes to her, by the way, likely a very dangerous journey through the Philistine encampment, coming to her by night, he says to her, I want you to do this thing for me, divine for me a spirit. Bring up her name. And. And she says it's illegal, right?
[00:14:30] She doesn't say she can't do it. She doesn't immediately agree to this. There's kind of a sort of clever, sort of unspoken negotiation thing that's going on here. She says, it's illegal. I can't do that. Surely you know what Saul has done for me or has done. He has cast, cut off the mediums and necromancers out of the land.
[00:14:51] Why? And then she recognizes the consequences. Why are you laying a trap for my life? To bring my death?
[00:14:58] Then Saul, using the name of Yahweh, says, as the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.
[00:15:09] An amazing thing, right? He swears by the name of the God he's disobeying by the God he's disobeying to bring about this thing.
[00:15:20] He's promising her in the name of the Lord that he will protect her when he should not be going to her or protecting her works here.
[00:15:33] Well, then you know what happens, right?
[00:15:36] Samuel comes up and he speaks. The prophet of the Lord speaks, and he speaks to Saul.
[00:15:46] Interestingly, he's wearing a robe. This is one reason that they recognize him. But there's more going on here than just the recognition of the robe. That, oh, it's Samuel. Remember that? It was when Saul, or, sorry, when Samuel spoke to Saul and told him what he tells him here, that the kingdom would be taken away from him. That Saul reaches out and grabs his robe, tears a piece off, and. And Samuel says, such shall it be. The kingdom shall be torn from you and given to another.
[00:16:17] So this is very much Samuel being Samuel, saying Samuel doing Samuel things. And here he is wearing his robe, the robe which itself symbolized the very things that he's saying.
[00:16:35] So Saul's not getting an answer from the Lord. He's not hearing from the Lord. So he decides to disobey the Lord. To get the answer he needs, he calls the prophet of the Lord. And the prophet of the Lord tells him this in verse 16. Why then do you ask me? Since the Lord has turned from you and become your enemy, the Lord has done to you as he spoke by me. For the Lord has turned the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor.
[00:17:05] Why? Verse 18. Because you did not obey the voice of the Lord and did not carry out his fierce wrath against Amalek.
[00:17:12] Therefore the Lord has done this thing to you today.
[00:17:15] Moreover, the Lord will give Israel also with you into the hands of the Philistines. And tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me. That just means dead. The Lord will give the army of Israel also into the hand of the Philistines and Saul. So Saul does not learn how to escape this judgment.
[00:17:40] He only learns that exactly that the thing that he fears is exactly what's going to happen. And it's going to happen because of his disobedience.
[00:17:54] Now, you might be tempted to be mad at God here.
[00:18:00] Saul went to you, right? You say to yourself, saul went to the Lord. He asked him for help, and the Lord didn't respond. Isn't this what God calls us to do? To go to the Lord, to go to him? Why would he not respond? Why would God be silent when someone is calling on him? And that's the question I want to think about for the rest of this message.
[00:18:24] Why is God not responding?
[00:18:27] Why is God silent?
[00:18:30] Well, there's several reasons to think about, to consider why this might be.
[00:18:37] There are a variety of reasons why God is quiet sometimes in our lives, why he turns his face away to use a phrase in scripture or to talk about it from an experiential sense. Why we sometimes get in really low spiritual places.
[00:18:56] Melancholy, depression, sadness, spiritual lethargy, just not caring very much about the people of God. The Word. You know you're supposed to, but you just don't really feel it. And you ask God for help and it doesn't really seem like it's happening.
[00:19:17] These kinds of things you call out to God and he doesn't answer.
[00:19:25] In recently published book, which I'm going to talk about in Sunday School as well, by the way, A Heart Aflame for God. It's called by Matthew Bingham, who's now at Phoenix Seminary.
[00:19:37] He talks about different causes for this going through the scriptures, different causes, why this happens in our lives, why we get to this, these sort of spiritual low places and feel like God isn't really with us, that he's silent, that he's not talking to us.
[00:19:53] And Dr. Bingham goes through five different things.
[00:19:58] He talks about personality and just in our bodies and our lives, being without sleep, being without food. That's part of Saul's problem. Here we see he talks about creeping worldliness as another reason that this happens. The way Jesus talks in his parable about the seeds, about how worldliness chokes us out, chokes out sort of the spiritual life, creeping worldliness, life circumstances, and is another reason we find ourselves in these places.
[00:20:30] There are great trials, hard things that happen in life, and they can get us down.
[00:20:36] There are the snares and traps of Satan as he lies to us and tries to deceive us and trick us and oppress us.
[00:20:45] And then finally, and this is the one we have to focus on this morning, sin.
[00:20:51] Sin.
[00:20:53] Sin separates us from the Lord. It disrupts our relationship with the Lord. It keeps us from hearing him, and in some cases, him even speaking to us.
[00:21:08] So there are lots of reasons why this can happen. We're only focusing on one of those right now, which is sin and the way that sin can disrupt our relationship with the Lord.
[00:21:22] How does this happen?
[00:21:25] Sin brings us under the discipline and displeasure of God. For one, if you sin against your friend, do things feel really good?
[00:21:36] If you steal your friend's possessions and lie to them about it, are they happy with you?
[00:21:43] Do you feel close to them? Is it comfortable? If you sin against your spouse or your employer? If you sin against anyone, if you sin against God, does that draw your relationship closer? Does that magnify feelings of expression in your heart even?
[00:22:01] You can think of it another way too.
[00:22:03] If the Lord has us walk in his paths and his ways, you can imagine this metaphor of walking along a path and then you choose another path. What's happening by the analogy, you are going away from him. You are creating distance, you are creating a separation.
[00:22:22] When we leave the things that God delights, when we leave the things that God's people and the things that God pleases, we leave God.
[00:22:33] Jesus says in Matthew 6:24, as just one example, you can't serve both God and money.
[00:22:40] If your heart is pursuing after this one thing, then your heart is not pursuing after him.
[00:22:48] This relates to the very nature of God.
[00:22:51] First, John 1:5 says, God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
[00:22:57] When we pursue the things of darkness, God is not pleased. He does not draw us into.
[00:23:06] Into that he is holy. He separates himself from unholiness.
[00:23:13] Now, we know that all the time God is forbearing with our foolishness and our sin, and he's patient all over the place, right? There are many, many things that you and I have done this week which there were no clear consequences for, right? Things basically went on as normal.
[00:23:35] But does that mean that just because God is patient with us and doesn't bring harsh discipline to bear on our lives every time we sin, that he doesn't care that he never disciplines or that he isn't already disciplining in some subtle ways?
[00:23:55] He does.
[00:23:57] And sometimes he turns away from us, so to speak.
[00:24:01] He draws away from us to help us to see the effect that our sin has in this relationship.
[00:24:09] A few more things to think about.
[00:24:12] What does sin do when we sin?
[00:24:15] Think about Adam and Eve. What happened when they sinned? What did they do?
[00:24:19] Did they go to God and give them a big hug and say, hey, you know, things are all good.
[00:24:26] They hid.
[00:24:28] They separated themselves from God. They hid. And when he sought after them, you know, as excuse making time. Our sin makes us turn away, our sin makes us hide. Sin zaps our spiritual energy, if I could put it that way. Or it zaps. It takes away. It draws away the zeal that we have for the Lord and the things of the Lord.
[00:24:54] And if that happens in a moment, the hiding, the shame, the guilt, the loss of heart and life and these sort of things, what happens when we make choices in which we are sinning all the time?
[00:25:12] Inconsistent ways, living in it, making it. Our lifestyle, our patterns, our habits.
[00:25:22] This is like feeding yourself poison on a regular basis and then trying to be strong and run a race.
[00:25:30] You're like, why am I so sick?
[00:25:34] I just don't feel good.
[00:25:36] Oh yeah, you don't.
[00:25:39] You're making yourself sick as you sit, as you feed yourself this poison of sin.
[00:25:49] I think it's worth continuing to impress this with just three passages. Not just, but with three passages of scripture.
[00:25:57] First, Isaiah 59. One, two.
[00:26:02] Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, or his ear dull that it cannot hear.
[00:26:09] But your iniquities have made a separation between you and God.
[00:26:15] Do you hear that? He says the Lord. It's not that the Lord can't act. It's not that the Lord can't save. It's not that the Lord can't hear. It's that your iniquities have made a separation between you and God.
[00:26:32] Psalm 32, verses 3 and 4. Here's what David says.
[00:26:37] When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long for day and night. Your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
[00:26:50] David describes physical effects in his body because of not confessing sin.
[00:27:00] His strength is dried up.
[00:27:04] We know what it means by the heat of summer, right? How many of you recently.
[00:27:08] Natural causes, right? Your body's just like, why am I so tired?
[00:27:13] It's hot outside and it's hard. Here David compares that feeling which we're all experiencing right now on a daily basis. He compares that to the feeling he feels when he doesn't confess his sin.
[00:27:25] That same kind of I just I'm wasted.
[00:27:31] My bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. One more Psalm 66, verses 18 and 19.
[00:27:42] This is sort of the flip side of it. David's or the psalmist's prayer is being heard. And he says, if I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But truly the Lord has listened. He has attended to the voice of my prayer.
[00:28:00] Why?
[00:28:01] Because he didn't cherish iniquity in his heart.
[00:28:06] Notice he's not saying I need to be sin free before I go to the Lord. He's talking about the state of being in which we love our sin. We cherish it. And then we go through to the Lord as though with all of that love still in there. And then asking him for things. And then we're shocked that he doesn't respond.
[00:28:28] So Saul, you're Saul's friend, you're Saul's advisor, you're one of Saul's servants. What do you tell him?
[00:28:35] You say the reason the Lord is not listening to you is because you're not repenting.
[00:28:43] Saul says the Lord doesn't hear. He's not hearing from the Lord. He's not really asking. He's asking to get out of a jam. He doesn't want something bad to happen to him. But he doesn't care about this lady.
[00:28:57] He doesn't care about his kingdom.
[00:29:00] He doesn't care about the call that God has placed on his life. He doesn't care about listening to Samuel that he's already heard from.
[00:29:09] And think about it too, from the perspective of the Lord, our Heavenly Father, who had already spoken to Saul in various ways.
[00:29:19] And did Saul listen?
[00:29:21] Did Saul pay attention?
[00:29:23] The last time that Saul used the Urim and the Thummim, he brought about a massacre and killed all of these priests.
[00:29:33] I don't know if you Remember that or not? But he used them to determine, you know, who had done this thing. And then a bunch of people were murdered.
[00:29:44] And now he's surprised that God is not going to talk to him, that God is not going to tell him. But you know what? God actually does talk to him, doesn't he?
[00:29:55] Through Samuel, he tells him, he reiterates the things that are true. Samuel tells him the exact truth and it is a hard truth. Saul is refusing to repent. Saul is refusing to follow the Lord and he is going to suffer the consequences of it.
[00:30:16] Now, in our Christian lives, as I've been saying, these are things that can cause a separation.
[00:30:24] And this struggle that we have is not a struggle that happens just once or some kind of accidental thing, brothers and sisters. This struggle is a part of the Christian life, right? Feeling down, feeling depressed, having a hard time. It's part of the battle that we have between the flesh and the spirit. It's how things will go.
[00:30:51] So you need to accept that.
[00:30:53] You need to accept that this is a part of the reality of life. Like Paul talks about in Romans 7, this sort of frustration. I do the things I don't want to do and all of that, right? There's that tension, there's that war that's going on.
[00:31:07] In Psalm 42, 5, we hear this. Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you at turmoil within me?
[00:31:15] You can look at the testimony of the lives of many saints and great pastors and preachers and martyrs and people that we would look at and they would talk about times when things were hard again, sometimes because of their own sin, sometimes because of other things.
[00:31:34] But in these moments, in these moments, we are called to go to God. The Westminster Confession of Faith says that there are times which God allows even those who fear him to walk in darkness and to have no light.
[00:31:49] And God does this on purpose to draw us closer to him, to make us call out to him, to sense our sin, to sense our needs and to look to him in faith, not in pride. Look to him in faith, not in self protection.
[00:32:07] Look to him in faith and in love, turning away from our sins to him. And he does answer those prayers.
[00:32:15] Jesus says, all who come to me and are heavy laden, I will give you rest, repent and turn from your sins. And God does give us forgiveness. He always answers that prayer. But that's not what Saul's doing here.
[00:32:33] Saul's doing what sadly, many people do, where he's living this kind of nominal Christian life, this sort of outward, external Christian life.
[00:32:43] But it's not really in his heart.
[00:32:46] How do you see the external elements? Well, he uses these.
[00:32:49] These phrases as the Lord lives, right? He call. He's talking, right? He's using these phrases of God's people.
[00:33:01] He put out the necromancers and the mediums. He did this thing that God had called them to do. He's supposed to fight against the Philistines, also something God has called him to do.
[00:33:12] There's this way in which outwardly he obeys the Lord and he kind of follows him, especially when it's convenient and helpful to him.
[00:33:21] But that's not where his heart is.
[00:33:25] The one time that he uses the name of the Lord where you kind of see his heart a little bit, it's in this blasphemous way.
[00:33:33] Compare that to the way that Samuel talks. I think it's about seven, six or seven different times Samuel refers to Yahweh and the things that he has done and the things that he has called and his purposes and his plans.
[00:33:49] Repentance means recognizing the Lord as our true Lord, holding fast to his promises to forgive and then just placing ourselves in his hands, turning away from our sin and turning to him.
[00:34:03] And the Lord does answer those prayers.
[00:34:06] Sometimes it takes some time.
[00:34:09] Sometimes the Lord is pleased, like in the life of Job and many, many people, to withhold a certain outward or even internal blessings and pleasures and joys.
[00:34:23] But it's not forever.
[00:34:26] He calls us not to give up on him, not to lose heart, but to persevere and put our hope in him.
[00:34:34] Saul's not doing that. And it's a warning for us.
[00:34:38] Saul's given up. He's going to this medium, this. This witch she's sometimes called.
[00:34:45] He doesn't have a heart of repentance. He's refusing to obey. Even after hearing all of this, what happens? He falls on his face and he gives up. He's being like, jonah, just kill me right?
[00:34:58] Jonah's disobeying. The storm's coming against him. He's there in the boat, and the sailors are scared. And he says, just throw me overboard.
[00:35:10] What about repentance, Jonah?
[00:35:13] What about, I'm sorry? What about calling out to the Lord for forgiveness, Saul? Same thing here.
[00:35:23] Me, Same thing here. You. Same thing here. Let us say to our hearts, call out to the Lord. Look to him for forgiveness. Repent. Turn away from our sins and seek our lives in him.
[00:35:39] God is not pleased by external things. Us sort of lamely living out a kind of nominal Christian life.
[00:35:48] God wants our hearts.
[00:35:52] We can give them to him. And when we do, he heals them. He makes them whole.
[00:35:59] Now, if God is if God sometimes withdraws himself because of sin in the Christian life, what about those who aren't Christians at all, whose relationship with the Lord is only characterized by rebellion?
[00:36:23] Will God respond positively and help them?
[00:36:28] Perhaps by his common grace, but often not. Romans 8:7 8 says this of the the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed it cannot.
[00:36:43] Those who are of the flesh cannot please God.
[00:36:48] Matthew 5:19 says, out of the heart come evil thoughts.
[00:36:53] Listen to Galatians, chapter 5, verses 19 through 20.
[00:36:58] Paul writes something similar there.
[00:37:01] He says, now the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
[00:37:26] Romans 1:21 says that those who do these sorts of things practice this sort of idolatry. Their hearts are foolish and darkened that God even gives us up over to those desires. So if that's the situation of your soul, if you are only a rebel of God, and then you go to him and say, hey, I really need out of a jam, you're his enemy.
[00:37:57] Let me put it this way. Don't be surprised if he doesn't answer you, if he doesn't give you help, if he doesn't provide for you. And if he does, drop on your knees and praise him and thank him and serve Him. And if he doesn't, drop on your knees and praise him and thank him and serve him with recognizing that you have no hope, that none of us have any hope apart from him.
[00:38:27] Don't despair. Don't give up.
[00:38:30] Don't give yourself over to terror and fear and panic attacks. Give yourself over to Him.
[00:38:39] These things are hard, and I don't want to oversimplify them. But at the same time, we do need to be honest with God and with our consciences. We need to not play games when it comes to the way our sins separate us from Him.
[00:38:57] A closer walk with God is not about outwardly performing certain things or belonging certain things and then refusing to give our hearts to him, cherishing the iniquities that are in us.
[00:39:11] Walking closer with God and all the things that he gives us in this life and in the life to come, including sanctified trials, means giving ourselves to him. And giving everything to him, turning away from our sin and our unrighteousness and seeking forgiveness.
[00:39:30] And the Lord provides that for us. Certainly 100% guaranteed Saul. Here we can contrast with Jesus, the great king over God's kingdom. And people who never went outside of God's will, never played loose with the laws of God, but perfectly, perfectly obeyed to secure a salvation for you.
[00:39:57] Perfectly obeyed so that he and all of us can enter into that joy of the Lord Jesus, when tempted by Satan and the things of this world, when suffering under difficulties in his body and in his life, in his relationships, he did not go to a medium, he did not go to a necromancer, and he waited on the Lord.
[00:40:28] Now you may say, well, of course, that was easy for him. He was God himself.
[00:40:33] That's why you're saved.
[00:40:37] Jesus is not merely our example of how we ought to live. He is our salvation so that we can live.
[00:40:45] It is our salvation that God came into this world to be the king that Saul and you and I and every other human being is unable to do. Jesus was able to do it, and he did it, and he did it perfectly.
[00:41:02] Which means that all the promises that we have in the Old Testament are turned up to 10. When we think about Jesus and the ways that we can trust him for all that we need, when we repent and we turn to Him, God gives to us not just a few more days on this earth, but eternal life.
[00:41:23] He takes the sting out of death and he turns it into a transition to. Into glory.
[00:41:30] And he does this.
[00:41:32] He does this not because we have finally brought all of our perfect lives into order, but because we have given to him our needs.
[00:41:41] We have stopped protecting our sins and cherishing our sins, but have turned to him for his grace.
[00:41:50] Jesus came into this world to solve this very problem. And. And he did.
[00:41:55] And so you can trust him. And you must trust him and give your lives fully to Him.
[00:42:02] Let's pray.
[00:42:04] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that we do not have to rely on the foolish things of the world and the deceitful things of this world to bring us into fellowship and communion with you.
[00:42:17] We praise your name that despite our arrogance, despite our pride, despite our lusts, despite all of our sinful anger and covetousness, you have come into this world and saved us from our sins.
[00:42:37] In light of this good news, Lord, let us run to you as fast as we possibly can each and every day.
[00:42:46] When we sin against you in our lives, Lord, help us not to spend even a moment wallowing in that or waiting to turn to you.
[00:42:59] Instead, let us hear your promises that all who come to you will be answered and will receive your grace.
[00:43:08] Lord, let us teach us not to pretend. We ask that your spirit would work in our hearts, that we would be able to know the difference between between playing games and waiting on the Lord.
[00:43:22] Lord, this kind of heart work is often very difficult and painful sometimes as well.
[00:43:28] But Lord, we ask that you would do it and like a good surgeon, cut out that which is sinful in us and give us a heart of flesh, a heart that is alive and beats for you, to serve you and to live for you, no matter what comes to us in the world.
[00:43:49] Lord, we pray these things in Jesus name, our perfect Savior, the author and perfecter of our faith, our only hope and our great joy. Amen.
