David the Musician

[00:00:07] Amen. Let's pray. [00:00:12] Our Heavenly Father, we call to you now and ask that you would continue to do your work of opening up our hearts so that we might believe and understand and love you and our neighbors as we ought. Lord, we ask that you would give us clarity about your words and that you would establish us firmly on you as our foundation. Lord, we thank you for your word and the power in it. We thank you that your spirit makes your word effective in our lives. [00:00:47] We praise you for this. For without you we would remain dead in our trespasses, dead in our sins, lost and dying. [00:01:00] But because of you, O Lord, you give us your wisdom, you allow us to receive it, and you transform our lives. [00:01:07] We pray for that this morning as we come to hear the reading and preaching of your word. And we pray not only for ourselves, but the word of God as it is proclaimed in other places as well. Throughout Tucson this morning and even Arizona. We pray for your blessing on Brad Pepo and his missionary labors in Northern Arizona and Verde Valley and Flagstaff. We ask that you would encourage him and strengthen him. That you would allow him to come into contact with many unbelievers and give him opportunity to share, to share and to teach the gospel. We also pray, Lord, for your work outside of our country this morning. In particular for the work in Uganda. We ask that you would be with the missionaries and their families there, the various supporters and workers. [00:02:03] Lord, there are many needs and we ask that you would meet them, Lord, as we consider your saints throughout the world and the work that you are doing throughout the world. We we ask that you would give us further confidence in you and hope and joy as we look forward to the day when you return. And people from every tribe and tongue and nation worship together in glory. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. [00:02:37] Well, please remain standing and let's turn to First Samuel, chapter 16. [00:02:42] First Samuel 16, 1423. [00:03:09] Here we continue to read about the fall of Saul and his kingship and the rise of David. Not accidents, but things that are done according to the will of God and his Spirit. Let's give our attention to God's word this morning. First Samuel 16, beginning at verse 14. [00:03:32] Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and a harmful spirit from the Lord tormented him. And Saul's servant said to him, behold, now a harmful spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our Lord now command your servants who are before you to seek out a man who is skillful in playing the lyre. And when the harmful spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will be well. [00:03:57] So Saul said to his servants, provide for me a man who can play well and bring him to me. One of the young men answered, behold, I have seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence. And the Lord is with him. Therefore Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, send me David, your son, who is with the sheep. And Jesse took a donkey laden with bread and a skin of wine and a young goat and sent them by David to his son Saul, or by David, his son, to Saul. And David came to Saul and entered his service, and Saul loved him greatly and he became his armor bearer. And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, let David remain in my service, for he has found favor in my sight. And whenever the harmful spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand. So Saul was refreshed and was well, and the harmful spirit departed from him. [00:05:04] You may be seated. [00:05:30] For you, gardeners, I have a question for you. [00:05:34] If you take a plant that needs the sun and you take that plant and you put it in a box, what happens? [00:05:46] The gardeners among you will be able to tell us that the plant will, of course, die because it requires the sun to live, among other things. Water, soil, these things that a plant requires in order to live. [00:06:02] We are like this plant with relation to God. [00:06:08] We do not live without Him. [00:06:12] Weirdly though, we have this view in our heads, sneaks into our hearts and our lives that sort of thinks that if you take a plant away from the sun and the water and the soil and you put it in a box, it's just going to be kind of a neutral plant. [00:06:31] A plant that doesn't need the sun, maybe it doesn't do as well. Well, but it kind of muddles on along its way. We think about this way with regard to ourselves. We think, okay, if I don't relate to God, if I don't depend on God, if I don't trust him, well, things probably won't be good because he is God. But I'll muddle along and be on my own. [00:06:56] False. [00:06:58] You cannot be on your own because you cannot even exist on your own. [00:07:04] Is there any among us who is self sustaining? [00:07:08] Is there any among us who has power within ourselves to simply continue our lives as long as we choose? [00:07:16] Of course not. Right. We are upheld by God and the various means that he uses, including the Son in our lives. [00:07:28] We're upheld by him at every point, in every way. And if he removes his power, if he removes his sustaining, upholding power, that's it. [00:07:38] That's it. And he of course, does do this at various times in the lives of everyone. We find a time when he takes our lives away. [00:07:47] The Lord gives life and the Lord takes life. This is his awesome power. And he does this in all kinds of ways, not just with the kind of basic principle of alive or dead, but he does this in every other way too. All the gifts that we have, all the experiences we have, all the things that are going on, on things that we might experience in a positive way, others we might experience in a negative way, it's all under his control. [00:08:15] It's all under his power. [00:08:19] Even so much so that we can say some of the most powerful things in this world belong to him. [00:08:27] The Son, the moon, the Devil. [00:08:32] Right? Even someone as strong and as powerful as Satan himself is ultimately under the control of God. Satan is not an equal to God. Satan is not this kind of equal force or almost equal force. And then you kind of battle it out or something like that. No, Satan is totally and completely under the control of the Lord. [00:08:58] This is really important for all kinds of things. [00:09:01] But it's important to remember these things, to remember how strong our God is, how powerful, how omnipotent he is. [00:09:11] What Satan does, what the Son does, what you do, all these things they do because of his will, because of his permitting these things, directing these things. [00:09:27] Our God is supreme above all, equal to none. King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Creator of all things. [00:09:41] So that means that we like the plant. You can't just take a plant and put it in a box and it's now a plant that muddles along without the sun. It's a plant that dies when you take a human being and you can't do this, but hypothetically, if you took a human being and separated him from God, he would die. [00:10:01] To be outside of the Lord in His power, and especially if we think about to be outside of the Lord in His saving power, it is to be in a dark place. [00:10:13] It is to be in a place of death, a place of wrath. There's not kind of this middle ground. [00:10:19] We either belong to him or we don't. When we're talking about our salvation, when we're talking about our ordinary lives, we either exist or we don't. There's not this sort of semi middle ground. [00:10:35] Well, what we see here is the power of God at work in the lives of David and Saul, and by extension this kingdom of Israel, and by extension the whole world, as Israel, is a witness and a testimony to the world of who God is and what he's doing. We are seeing the Spirit of God at work. And what we see is that just as Saul loses his power, he loses his peace. As he turns against God and God withdraws himself from Saul's life, we also see how everyone is vulnerable to. To losing the power and the peace of God. When the Spirit of God is rejected, refused, when we turn away from God, we turn away from life, from the power of life, and of course, all the blessings and peace of life. [00:11:35] The hope for us is that in dark times like this, as we'll see through Christ, we receive and God gives to us freely the power and the peace of the Spirit of God, even when we don't deserve it. When we turn to the Lord in faith, when we turn to the Lord in repentance, he promises to bless us with His Holy Spirit and to give us all that we need. [00:12:03] So let's begin by noting a few things in our passage. [00:12:07] First, let's note how it is that the Spirit empowers much more than we realize. [00:12:15] In our passage, we see that the Spirit, verse 14, the Spirit of the Lord departs from Saul. And then a second thing happens, a harmful spirit from the Lord torments him. [00:12:27] This begins a whole series of things which we'll want to remember. When we see Saul afraid, when we see Saul acting rashly, when we see Saul trying to pin David to the wall with a spear, later trying to murder this one that he now loves so much, we need to remember this passage. What happened here? That the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and now he is being tormented by a harmful spirit from the Lord. [00:13:05] Something awful is happening now in Saul's life now that he has rejected the Lord and the Lord has rejected him. [00:13:16] This harmful spirit is one who terrifies and brings fear into Saul's life. All of the insecurities that he has, all of the difficulties, the anxiety, the lack of wisdom, all of that now gets amplified as he is terrified in all kinds of situations. [00:13:42] A lot of times we think that the Holy Spirit, we wrongly think that the Holy Spirit is only effective and active. Maybe we could say for supernatural things, really big things, miracles. When things like miracles happen, we can we say, well, that's a God thing. Some people use this language, that's a God thing. And of course, what they mean by that is they're wanting to recognize and praise God for this amazing, amazing thing. But it's important for us to remember that God not only does works miracles by His Spirit, he also works all the ordinary things of life as well by his spirit. In Exodus 31, we read about how the Spirit of God equipped people to be great craftsmen using gold and silver, things like this. Later, the Holy Spirit equips men to build the temple and to build it well, nothing supernatural, just excellent work using the means and the tools that they had had. [00:14:47] We see God's Spirit equipping leaders as well. Not just craftsmen, but men like Gideon and Japheth and Othniel. Judges are equipped by the Holy Spirit to do their work. Sometimes in ways that are rather ordinary, we could say they do their leaderly things and those leaderly things are effective, and sometimes in ways that are really extraordinary, really special. [00:15:18] So, for example, the Holy Spirit is said to equip Samson to do various things and give him strength, right? But he also equips him in this extraordinary ways to do things that would not be possible for a human being to do on to do. [00:15:38] And so we see the Holy Spirit equipping both at a extraordinary level and an ordinary level. [00:15:46] David's ability to play music is one of these things. David is given the gifts to play and to play well. [00:15:58] He is. He plays on this. This lyre, a 10 stringed instrument that sometimes would be plucked with what we might call a pick or sometimes, as it says here, with the hand. This is probably when it says that David took the lyre and played it with his hand. It probably means he didn't use a pick. Kind of an interesting detail there. And so he's playing this instrument and he played really well. [00:16:26] He was skillful in playing. Where does skill come from? It comes from the Lord. It comes from the Holy Spirit both in ordinary and extraordinary ways. This is important when we read about the gifts of the Holy Spirit in places like First Corinthians. These gifts have both extraordinary and ordinary forms. Take languages, for example. In an extraordinary way, God has given people in history the ability to suddenly speak a language that they didn't know. [00:16:59] It's also true that God gives certain people the ability to memorize flashcards and study grammar and hear things and repeat things. We don't want to say that one is of God and the other is not. [00:17:16] God gives both extraordinary and ordinary gifts. And so we see this here happening in the lives of David and Saul. Interestingly, the Lord uses these gifts that he gives even ordinary ones for blessing and even blessing. It seems to be even in the spiritual realm David's. [00:17:43] David's skillful playing has an effect not just on Saul, but it seems to have an effect on this spirit as well, this harmful spirit. We read in verse 23 that whenever the harmful spirit was upon Saul, David took the lyre, played it with his hand, Saul was refreshed and was well, and the harmful spirit departed from him. [00:18:08] Kind of an interesting thought, things to think about. [00:18:14] We also can remember, and we can look at this in the life of Jesus, when we think about how the Spirit empowers, right, the Jesus was born of the Spirit, right, this miraculous thing in which a virgin conceived. [00:18:30] But we also read that the Holy Spirit empowered Jesus and equipped him in his humanity for all kinds of things, even what we might call ordinary or at least less extraordinary things. [00:18:46] Quoting from Isaiah, Jesus says in Luke 4:18, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. [00:19:08] A lot of people wrongly think that things like proclaiming, speaking and preaching are just ordinary things, right? That's not of the Holy Spirit. You just do it, right? But it's like the amazing effects of regeneration. Now that's of the Holy Spirit. What the Bible says is it's both. [00:19:33] The Holy Spirit is the one who anoints him to proclaim the good news to the poor. He proclaims liberty to the captives and proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. The Holy Spirit is also the one who gives sight to the blind, liberty to those who are oppressed, sets the captives free. [00:19:55] Saul, once very mighty, becomes weak and paranoid, fearful when the Spirit of God leaves him. David, on the other hand, is strengthened and equipped when the Spirit of God comes upon him, both for playing here and as we'll see, for leadership, for a good decision making for all kinds of things going forward. [00:20:24] So this first point that we're trying to realize here this morning, the Spirit empowers us more than we realize. We're thinking of the Spirit often too small, putting him in just this one box of extraordinary and supernatural things, when the work of God covers all things. [00:20:43] And so if the Spirit is necessary for wisdom, for skill, for strength, it leads us to ask, then what happens when he's absent? [00:20:54] Without the Spirit and the work of the Spirit, we become, of course, vulnerable. Now, as I said, we are never fully without the Spirit of God. This is Both believers and unbelievers. We're never fully without the Spirit of God, or else we wouldn't exist. Exist, right. We are sustained by God. Even when we are rejecting him and hating him and fighting Him. He sustains us. But in these special ways in which God gives grace, a common grace to both believers and unbelievers, and then on top of that special grace to his children. [00:21:33] When we think about the Spirit, the Spirit giving less, the Spirit going away, we find that this is not a good place for us to be in. [00:21:48] Without the Spirit, as I said, Saul became tormented with fear and paranoia. [00:21:54] This evil spirit was permitted even here. We have was sent from the Lord to come. [00:22:02] This is important for us to remember. [00:22:05] The scripture tells us that there are evil powers, principalities and powers that operate in this world. [00:22:13] God protects us from them. [00:22:16] God keeps us from them. [00:22:19] Last week I believe it was in the sermon. Maybe it was in Sunday school. I quoted Hebrews 2, 14, 15. Let me read that again. [00:22:30] Speaking of Jesus, we read that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who, through fear of death, were subject to lifelong slavery. [00:22:45] Through the fear of death, Satan holds us in the position of slaves. He keeps us captive. [00:22:55] What does God do? He sends his son to destroy death. And the one who has the power of death, he sets us free. [00:23:04] And so we have other scriptures like Second Corinthians 1:7, that says God has given us not a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of self control. [00:23:14] Or Romans 8:15. You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry Abba, Father. [00:23:27] Here we see that the work of God in saving us is partly a work of pushing away, pushing back, setting us free from darkness, from Satanic forces which use fear and elevate fear and amplify fear in our lives to keep us from the Lord. [00:23:54] Jesus himself, interestingly faced spiritual attack and was equipped by the Spirit to overcome. [00:24:02] In Matthew chapter four, we read that the Spirit of God pushed Jesus, led Jesus out into the wilderness where he then was tempted by the devil. [00:24:12] That's an interesting thing. [00:24:15] We'll think about this in a second. Why would God. Why would God bring Jesus into a position where he was under attack of the Satan? Why does God sometimes make us vulnerable and put us in difficult situations? Before we think about that though, remember how it is Jesus overcame. [00:24:35] He overcame by the power of the spirit, by the word of God. He overcame by resisting the devil and his false words with the true words of God. [00:24:51] Sometimes the Spirit of God does make us vulnerable, but this is, of course, for our good. [00:25:02] Sometimes God does this to punish. Saul, for example, is getting exactly what he wants. [00:25:10] Sometimes it's to show us our need for God so that he might sanctify us. Turn with me to Psalm 51. [00:25:20] I want to read a few verses from here. [00:25:28] Psalm 51, and you might see the title there. A Psalm of David. When Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into bathsheba. [00:25:38] In Psalm 51, verse 7, David says, Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than the snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. [00:26:18] What do we see here? [00:26:20] We see David asking the Lord not to remove not his salvation, but the Spirit of God who's bringing comfort, who's equipping him for his work as king, who brings to him the joy of his salvation. [00:26:36] Once the Spirit regenerates us and causes us to be united to Christ, there's no unregenerating, there's no being lost. The Scriptures are very clear on this point. When we are in the hand of God and He is our Father, we are safe and secure, and nothing can separate us from him and his love. [00:26:58] In his love, then God disciplines us. And sometimes, as the Psalms say, he turns his face from us. There is a removal of his peace and his presence, his power in our lives. That is a disciplinary measure. That's what David is experiencing. And what does he ask for here? He asked that God would not turn his face away from him, but has turned away his face from his sins. [00:27:27] He's asking for forgiveness. He's asking that his Spirit, his bones, his body would be rest, that he would renew a right Spirit within him, and that his Holy Spirit would not be taken away, that his joy would come back in all this. My point is this. We see a lot here going on, but one of the things we see is God's discipline, his loving discipline in the life of David, and we experiencing the. We experience these. These. We experience these things as well in our lives. [00:28:02] God disciplines those whom he loves. [00:28:07] So Sometimes God removes his spirit not in a the removing of our salvation, but removing of these temporary blessings and encouragements and these kinds of things and else. And other things. He removes these things to draw us back to him, to cause us to wake up and see our need for him, to see and feel what it experiences, what it feels like, what our experience is. When we're like that plant in a box, we go, oh, yeah, I don't want this. [00:28:47] And so we call out to God, like David called out to God, and we say, restore to me the joy of your salvation. Restore to me my joy, my healing. Restore to me our relationship. [00:29:02] So sometimes the Lord works in these ways to sanctify us, sometimes to discipline us, to give us what we want, so to speak, as he does with Saul. But there's a third reason which we have to make sure we say, why does the Lord do these kinds of things? [00:29:20] And one reason is, we don't know. [00:29:26] Sometimes we just don't know. [00:29:29] Deuteronomy 32, 39 says this. See, now that I, even I am he, and there is no God beside me. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal, and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. [00:29:46] Here God simply establishes himself or establishes himself in a simple way, in a very clear, understandable way who he is. [00:29:56] A way that totally undermines so much that goes on in our hearts where we think God is this sort of transactional being or a power that we can manipulate or sort of negotiate or work with. And that if we do X, Y and Z, then A, B and C will happen. And God takes all that away and says, I do what I want when I want, period. [00:30:19] I kill, I make alive, I wound, I heal. And there is none that can deliver me or none that can deliver out of my hand. This is what I was talking about at the beginning with the supremacy of the Lord. And this is what Job, of course, experiences. [00:30:38] At the beginning of Job, we hear a conversation between Satan and God. [00:30:44] We hear a conversation between Satan and God. But you know who doesn't hear that conversation? [00:30:49] Job. [00:30:50] Job doesn't hear that conversation. [00:30:54] Job 1:9. Satan answered the Lord and says, does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and a house and all that he has on every side? The answer, of course, is yes, God has right, truth. There. He continues to say, you have blessed the work of his hands and his possessions and increased his land. Again, truth. [00:31:17] Then Satan says, but stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will Curse you to your face. [00:31:23] And the Lord said to Satan, behold, all that he has is in your hand, only against him. Do not stretch out your hand. [00:31:32] So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. See, you see what I meant by Satan being under the control of God. Satan comes with these accusations against Job, says, oh, you blessed him with all these things, take them away and he'll curse you to your face. [00:31:47] Then God gives Satan, permits Satan to go and work against Job. [00:31:54] We could say that an evil spirit, even the evil spirit, was sent from the Lord to torment Job. [00:32:02] Ouch. [00:32:05] And yet not a blank check. [00:32:10] That devil is on a tight leash. He only can do what God permits. [00:32:18] He commands him, do not stretch out your hand against Job. And he is not able to. He's not able to take his life. In Job two, four, Satan comes back, answers, the Lord says, skin for skin, all that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand, touch his bone, touch his flesh, and he'll curse you to your face. The Lord says to Satan, behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores and the sole of his foot to the crown of his head again. Why does this happen? Well, we can say all kinds of things as we read through Job. We can say, well, the Lord's teaching us about his sovereignty through Job. He's teaching about us, his power over even Satan. We are learning to submit ourselves before him, all these kinds of things. But remember, who doesn't get to hear that conversation? Job. [00:33:15] And who doesn't get to hear all of the will of God and all the behind scenes things in your life? You, me, God is doing all kinds of things according to his perfect and holy will that we do not know about and we will not know about. Maybe here and there he'll give us a little bit of insight as to why this or that is happening. We can be thankful for it and we should learn from it. [00:33:43] But there is so much in our lives where, like Job, we just need to stop talking. [00:33:50] We need to be quiet and be still before the awesomeness of the Lord who loves us, who loves us and who uses these things. Romans 8 tells us and works all things for good. [00:34:09] All things for good. [00:34:11] Luther provocatively and helpfully calls Satan his angel or his handmaiden. It's a weird way of speaking, but why? [00:34:23] Because God can take someone as evil as Satan, as wicked and terrible, his arch enemy, and use him for good, for our Good. [00:34:38] And he does this with Job. Job was afflicted under Satan, under God's allowance. But ultimately he overcomes and he trusts in God's sovereignty. He does not curse God, and God works through him. [00:34:55] And now we all learn and benefit from it as well. [00:34:59] In all this, we are learning several things. We're learning why God in some ways does the things that he does. We're learning to be humble for the times when we don't understand why he does what he does does. And instead of rejecting him and pushing back and saying, this isn't fair and I don't want this, we bow ourselves before Him. We say, what am I to. Who am I to argue? [00:35:23] To submit ourselves before him and trust that he will do all his holy will and that all his holy will is good and perfect. [00:35:31] To put our faith in him and know that we are not him and that he alone is God and there is none beside Him. [00:35:41] If that's true, then then you can see why I'm saying rejecting him makes us vulnerable. This would be a weak way to put it very much at risk. Another very weak way to put puts us in a terrible position of going against the Almighty God, King of the universe and the only one who can save you. [00:36:11] The only one. The only one who can take the chain that is on the devil and put it exactly at the length he wants and shorten it and lengthen it however and whenever he wants. There's only one that can do that, and that's Him. [00:36:31] The greatest proof of this, of course, is Christ himself, whom Satan tried to destroy, tried to take his life, and indeed he died. [00:36:42] Our Lord, our King, David's greater Son, was empowered by the Holy Spirit, anointed by the Holy Spirit, and lived this life as we read earlier, so that he could die. [00:36:59] Now, from the perspective of the false trials and the mobs and all those people putting Jesus on the cross, it would seem like they were very much in control. [00:37:13] They were moving the story. They were telling what the. They were holding Jesus, capturing Jesus, whipping Jesus, falsely accusing Jesus, embarrassing Jesus, crucifying Jesus, burying Jesus, putting him into a tomb, they seem very much in control. They seem very much in power. But of course, we read that this was planned from before time, that these ways in which these people were acting, the ways in which Satan was seeking to swallow up the child that was being born of the woman, ways that Satan was using the things in this world and working in this world to destroy the Chosen One. [00:38:00] It's totally impossible. [00:38:02] Totally impossible. Why? Because God is King. And there's no one beside him. And what we turn out, what we learn, the way things fall out according to God's will, is that Jesus is not just a man. [00:38:18] Jesus is God himself, the Son from the Father, who has everything that the Father has. [00:38:26] And so, surprise, surprise, Satan is defeated. [00:38:30] And on the cross itself, Jesus has his victory, which is vindicated, of course, by his ascension into heaven and his coming again. [00:38:44] Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures say, is raised by the Holy Spirit, and then on top of all of that, sends out His Spirit to us, causing us not only just to have life in this world, but to have life for the world to come, giving life not just to our our mortal bodies, but giving life, immortal life, to our bodies. [00:39:11] That same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, the Scriptures say, raises us as well. That same Spirit who equipped our Lord and Savior through him and through his work for us, also equips us and gives us everything we need in this life and for the life to come. [00:39:30] We see that in Acts, where these men who were timid and afraid and running all of a sudden are boldly proclaiming the word of God, willing even to die for it. And on top of that, God is doing all sorts of things to prove the effectiveness of His Gospel. In many ways, the apostles in those early days repeat all the same miracles that Jesus himself did. [00:39:56] Why? Because they're in Christ and they have His Spirit. [00:40:04] This anointing, in other words, that God gives through His Spirit, is an anointing that it's not just for David, but it's for us as well, in accord with our own callings and the things that God gives to us. If God has given you His Spirit, he is through faith in Jesus Christ. He's not just regenerated you, which is amazing and wonderful and our great hope, but he is also continually equipping you for your everyday lives, giving you his power, his peace, his comfort, producing in you the fruits of the Holy Spirit. [00:40:43] Kindness, love, self control. Where do these things come from? From His Spirit. [00:40:49] It's the Holy Spirit working in us through Christ that allows us to bow ourselves before the Lord and to say, not my will, but yours be done on earth as it is in heaven. [00:41:03] It's the Holy Spirit working in us that allows us to turn the other cheek, to make disciples of all nations, to praise the Lord and rejoice, even in times of trials and sorrows. [00:41:20] Saul's life shows us the tragic consequences of rejecting the Lord. [00:41:28] The Lord says, you have rejected me, so I reject you. [00:41:34] David's life shows us the blessings that come from receiving the Spirit of God, shows us what happens when we fall and repent and find joy in the Lord. Again. [00:41:53] The thing to take away this morning is this. Without God, without his Spirit, we are weak, we are vulnerable, we are dying. [00:42:01] And if we are truly without him, if we are truly separated from him, then it's not just weak and dying and foolish. It's coming under his wrath. [00:42:15] It's coming under his anger for our sins and our cruelty to him and to others, but with the Spirit who comes to us through Jesus Christ. We are given so much. [00:42:32] We are given the power and the peace that we need at every perfect moment, whether we understand it or not, for this life and the life to come. [00:42:43] And the amazing thing in all of this is Christ offers this to us freely. He doesn't say, do these 10 things and then I will give my spirit to you. He simply says, believe on me. Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. [00:43:03] Do not reject the strength that you need. Do not reject the power that you need. Do not reject the peace that you need, but seek the Holy Spirit through Christ. [00:43:15] Today let's pray. [00:43:21] Our heavenly Father, we thank you for the glorious work that you do through your Son and through your spirit working in this world. We thank you for all your blessings of common grace and the way that you pour out on these blessings, both on believers and unbelievers. Everywhere we look we see your patience and your forbearance. We see these things that are meant to call us to repentance. And so, Lord, as we look at everything from the shade that comes from the trees to the rain that falls, to the relationships that we have in our lives, we ask that we would give all glory and credit to you. [00:44:04] And Lord, where there is sin and rejection of you, we ask that you would humble our hearts and that you would cause us to cry out for forgiveness. [00:44:14] Lord, let us not be prideful as Saul was at times seeking our way, doing our own thing apart from you. For apart from you is only death. [00:44:26] But in you is life and even eternal life. [00:44:32] In you, Lord, you give to us life, even in in our deaths, even in our dying. [00:44:41] You do not leave us, you do not forsake us, but you promise us that those who even die in the Lord will also raise with the Lord. [00:44:56] We ask for your blessing on us, Lord, not in just general ways, but in specific ways as particular things come to our minds, even as we pray, things that we need, things that we need both with regard to physical things, temporal things with regard to spiritual things. [00:45:20] We give them over to you now, Lord, and we ask that your Holy Spirit would be at work giving to us all that we need. And as we receive them, Lord, we ask that you would give us praise. [00:45:32] You would help us to praise you. [00:45:35] Humble us, Lord, we are so in need of humbling lift up your name in our hearts and in our lives. [00:45:42] May the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit be evident in us. And may many give you praise for these wonderful works. We pray this all in Jesus name. Amen.