The Judgeship of Samuel

[00:00:07] Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we ask that as we come now to the reading and preaching of your word from First Samuel, that you would help us to understand, not only in an intellectual way, but Lord, in every way, according to our emotions. Let our wills be filled with strength and zeal for your word and your ways. Lord, we ask that you would help us to see you better, to trust you more, and the salvation that you bring to us in Christ. [00:00:41] We thank you that in his coming the kingdom of God has come and that we rest in him, and then our citizenship which is in heaven. We ask that you would bless us as we hear your word here on earth today by the power of your spirit. We ask that you would help us to hear in such a way that our faith would be strengthened, that our wounds would be healed, and that we would be prepared even more for the callings to which you call us. [00:01:10] We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. [00:01:15] I'll remain standing if you're able. And let's turn our attention to First Samuel in the Old Testament. [00:01:22] First Samuel, chapter seven. [00:01:58] I'm going to read beginning at verse two through the end of the chapter. Let's give our attention to God's word. [00:02:07] From the day that the ark was lodged in Kiriath Jearim, a long time passed, some 20 years, and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord. [00:02:20] And Samuel said to all the house of Israel, if you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines. [00:02:39] So the people of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtaroth, and they served the Lord only. Then Samuel said, gather all Israel at Mizpah, and I will pray to the Lord for you. So they gathered at Mizpah and drew water and poured it out before the Lord and fasted on that day and said, there we have sinned against the Lord. [00:03:00] And Samuel judged the people of Israel at Mizpah. Now when the Philistines heard that the people of Israel had gathered at Mizpah, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel. And when the people of Israel heard it, they were afraid of the Philistines. And the people of Israel said to Samuel, do not cease to cry out to the Lord our God for us, that he may save us from the hand of the Philistines. [00:03:24] So Samuel took a nursing lamb and offered it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord. And Samuel cried out to the Lord for Israel. And the Lord answered him. And Samuel was offering up the burnt offerings. The Philistines drew near to attack Israel. But the Lord thundered with a mighty sound that day against the Philistines and threw them into confusion. And they were defeated before Israel. And the men of Israel went out from Mizpah and pursued the Philistines and struck them as far below as Bethkar. Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer. For he said, till now the Lord has helped us. [00:04:07] So the Philistines were subdued and did not again enter the territory of Israel. And the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel. The cities that the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel, from Ekron to Gath. And Israel delivered their territory from the hand of the Philistines. [00:04:26] There was peace also between Israel and the Amorites. Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life. And he went on a circuit year by year to Bethel, Gilgal and Mizpah. And he judged Israel in all these places. Then he would return to Ramah, for his home was there. And there also he judged Israel. And he built there an altar to the Lord. [00:04:49] You may be seated. [00:05:14] Sometimes when you're in the middle of something, something difficult, it's hard to remember that there are other things going on. [00:05:24] If you've ever been in a situation where you perhaps have had something called tunnel vision, either truly your eyes are focused and are unable to see the peripheral, or maybe metaphorically, you are just so focused on a thing that the other things around you are out of view. You're not paying attention to them. [00:05:47] Sometimes when we are in the midst of very difficult situations, very difficult trials, we forget that there are other things that God might be doing. [00:06:00] There is a truth here that sometimes things are going on in the background that we don't recognize. And nevertheless, they're very important. [00:06:11] They're very important. And sometimes they turn out to be huge. And the life of Samuel is in some ways an example of that. [00:06:20] This book of Samuel begins with his birth. [00:06:26] And then we read about him growing up in the Lord as a child. And then he kind of disappears from view for a few chapters. The Philistines are engaged in this battle with the Israelites. God is on the move throughout the Philistine territory. And then all of a sudden, we come here to chapter seven. The Ark is coming back into Israel. And we read in verse two that long time passed, some 20 years, and all the house of Israel lamented before the Lord. [00:06:58] Samuel, we can say, has been growing up right during all this time and all this movement of the ark and the terror that has been on the Philistines that we've been reflecting on in the last few chapters. Samuel has been growing up, and the Lord has been working in his life, training him, growing him and preparing him to now be a leader in Israel, to judge Israel, to be a prophet in Israel, to be something, even of a priest in Israel. [00:07:33] Another obvious example of God sort of working in the background and then bringing things forward at the perfect moment is, of course, in sending Jesus his son. [00:07:45] It was a plan that began before the foundation of time. And it would come to pass in what the scriptures call the fullness of time. [00:07:55] In this poetic way, the scriptures talk about time as if it were pregnant. [00:08:00] And then at this ordained moment when time was all full, the Messiah was born. [00:08:08] He would be like Samuel, judge over the people, a teacher, a prophet, a priest, a king. [00:08:17] But he would be more than that. He would not only save Israel from her sins, but the whole world living quietly at first, like Samuel. We hear of his birth, and then decades pass until it's time for him to come to teach, to judge, to heal, to forgive sins, to die and ultimately rise from the dead and rule as he is now. [00:08:44] Samuel is a precursor of all this. Samuel is foreshadowing all of this. He's an early step in which God is establishing his kingdom and teaching us about our Savior and who the Lord is as our king. [00:09:03] So as we think about Samuel's life, there's a few lessons that we can learn and pay attention to. And one of them is that things are going on that we don't know about, that we don't see. [00:09:16] Samuel appeared during a time when things were going badly in Israel because of their poor relationship with God. Remember some of the stories that we've heard so far, how Samuel begins, What's going on at this time? We heard about a priestly family, Eli and his sons, who were trying to find success in achieving it in some worldly ways by ignoring and using God. [00:09:43] We heard about Israel, who tried to find success and blessing in the land by controlling God through the ark. And then we heard about the Philistines, who tried to find success and blessing by beating and controlling God. And in every single one of these instances, as people try to ignore, use, control the Lord of heaven and earth, they find themselves unsuccessful they find themselves frustrated. They find themselves that, no, you cannot ignore God. You cannot control God. You cannot use him or beat him, or treat him as your pet. [00:10:23] In each and every time this happened, people ended up dying. There was tragedy and suffering and tears. [00:10:33] In each case, instead of the glory and the blessing of God resting upon them, the glory of God departed from them. Not merely to create absence and distance, but also wrath and terror. [00:10:50] And then in the background of all of that, the Lord was working through all this time. It might seem as though it's just all suffering, all tragedy, all death because of the sins of man as we abuse our relationship with the Lord. [00:11:09] And indeed, the Lord was exercising his fury and his wrath. But at the same time, something else was going on, wasn't it? [00:11:17] He was raising up Samuel. He was raising up this boy who had become a man out of this Israelite family in a place of suffering and trial. [00:11:31] Remember how the story of Samuel begins. [00:11:35] The story begins with his mother, Hannah, in a very difficult position, suffering in her family. But she did something different than all these other examples we've heard about. Instead of ignoring God, instead of trying to control him or beat him, do you remember what she did? [00:11:55] She prayed. [00:11:58] She prayed to him earnestly. She prayed persistently. She prayed fervently. She prayed. She drew close to the Lord in prayer. [00:12:11] She humbled herself, was honest about her situation, and sought his help. [00:12:19] Now Hannah knew that she couldn't control the Lord. We read about this in her prayer. [00:12:25] He is the One who is almighty. He's the one who brings things to life and puts things to death. He's the one who can lift the poor out of the ashes. He's the one who can take kings and princes and powers and put them down in a moment. Hannah knows how powerful he is. Hannah knows how sovereign and great he is. [00:12:48] She knows that she cannot use God, manipulate God, control God. But she also knew what she could do, seek his blessing and his help. Because she knew his character. [00:13:01] She knew his promises. [00:13:03] She knew the things that he had told Israel long ago that her that through her fathers in the faith, God would raise up, through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, a great family that he would bless forever. And one seed in particular, through whom all the nations in heaven and earth would be blessed. Hannah put her trust in that Lord, in our Lord. [00:13:36] When we think about the character of God, we are reminded of two important things. When it comes to prayer number one, we will get everything that he has promised. [00:13:51] Everything. [00:13:53] If you find something in Scripture that the Lord has promised to You. You can guarantee that you will receive it as you trust him for it, as you put your faith in him for it. It's really that simple. [00:14:06] There's a lot of promises, too. [00:14:09] Hundreds of them, thousands of them. Perhaps if you do your addition right and think about implications and all these other things. The Lord promises these things to you, and you will receive them. Some of them are very big. We could name something like eternal life pleasures forevermore at his right hand, a body that raises from the dead, incorruptible fellowship with him and his saints forever, without any suffering, freedom and forgiveness from sin. These are huge, huge promises. [00:14:46] And the character of the Lord says that they will be given to you as you put your trust in. In Him. [00:14:54] A second thing we can say about our prayer is that not only are all these specific things that he's promised going to be ours, but everything that he does is for our good. [00:15:07] Everything. Even the suffering parts, even the hard parts, the challenging parts, all of them he's doing in order to bless us. So even the mysterious parts, the parts that we can't see, the stuff that we don't know or understand, the stuff that we will never know or understand the Lord is using for our good. [00:15:30] That's based on the character of the Lord and His sovereignty and his power and many other things. Because God is who he is. We can depend on him, like Hannah did in this way. [00:15:43] Hannah wanted a son. She wanted to dedicate him to the Lord. And in the Lord's providence, that's what he gave her. [00:15:51] But he also gave her a bunch of things that she wouldn't know about. How he would become this Judge of Israel, how he would foreshadow Christ in these ways, and how he would still be teaching us today. [00:16:04] She didn't need to know all that then, but you need to know it now. Because the Lord gives it to you and wants you to reflect on it, meditate on it, and have your assurance built more strongly in Him. [00:16:19] We can think of 1 Samuel 1:7 as kind of Act 1 in this great epic history. [00:16:29] And what we see in the most previous verses for years is that it would have seemed like God wasn't doing anything except being angry. Of course, he had a right to be angry. His people were being rebellious. But nevertheless, we also see in chapter seven that he was also being forbearing. Wasn't he in the background? He was raising up a Savior. [00:16:52] And we need to remember this in our lives. We can't always see all that God is doing. [00:16:58] Sometimes he is setting motion blessings and helps decades before we realize them, sometimes thousands of years before we see them. But he's good. He knows what he's doing, and he's doing it in all wisdom. [00:17:16] So one lesson we can learn here is to trust God and look to him, which is exactly what Samuel in this chapter teaches them to do. Let's think about his actions here. [00:17:28] God brings forward Samuel at this time when Israel is finally, finally coming to their senses after 20 years. We read that the house of Israel lamented after the Lord wailed after the Lord. [00:17:43] They're feeling finally the weight of his absence and his blessing. They're missing his glory. They're feeling the oppression of the Philistines, and they're finally crying out to the One who can save them. [00:17:57] Sidebar let's remember to cry out to the One who can save us. [00:18:02] Well, Samuel, as this great judge, prophet, priest, king of the Lord, he tells them what to do. [00:18:11] And I'll give you a list of things that happen in this chapter in six short pieces. Number one Put away foreign gods, which is simply to say false gods, gods that are not true gods. What is a false God? Anything or anyone that you fear more or put more hope in or love more than God himself. [00:18:36] Any area of your life where you live by something other than dependence on God. How can you find these places? One way is to examine. Again, we come back to prayer. [00:18:49] To whom do you turn when you need help or when you want to give thanks? Do you turn to the Lord? [00:18:59] Or do you turn to your bank account or a political party, or your smartphone or your friends or superstition or food or planning? [00:19:10] Think about it functionally, practically, how do you live your life? If you are a believer, then my guess is there are certain areas where it's a straight shot to the Lord. You know that there's certain things that you depend on him for. But then there's other things that for some reason you don't. [00:19:28] You don't really pray about them. You don't think about them as under his authority, as under his desire for you. And for some reason you just rely on yourself for those things. [00:19:42] Why? You might ask yourself, in what ways are you serving yourself or other things as a God instead of Him? [00:19:52] We are turn away from false gods when we need to call on the Lord, number one. Number two repentance. Samuel calls them to fasting and prayer. [00:20:08] It's not enough to simply turn away. We need to recognize that our sins are part of the problem. To go before the Lord and not only recognize His Awesomeness and His goodness, his sovereignty, all of these things, but to recognize the ways in which we've failed, in which we've separated ourselves from him, to be honest before the Lord. [00:20:32] The third thing is that we need a mediator and a sacrifice. [00:20:38] When we come to God, we don't just come as needy people. We'd come as needy people, but not just as needy people. We come as dirty people. We come as guilty people. We come as sinful people. [00:20:55] Hence the need for repentance. [00:20:58] We come as people who have offended him, who have adulterously left him brothers and sisters. We don't just need repentance, we need forgiveness. [00:21:11] We need forgiveness. And we need God's wrath to be turned away from us. [00:21:17] And that's why Samuel uses this sacrifice, this lamb or not, I'm sorry, this nursing cow as a whole burnt offering. Now, Samuel knows, and all true believers know that animals cannot turn away our sin because of some sort of magic in the animal. [00:21:47] God is not so weak as to be appeased by the burning of an animal and then think, oh, well, okay, I guess we're all good now, right? But God instituted these sacrifices in the Old Testament to show what was necessary in order for atonement to happen. [00:22:10] Death was necessary. [00:22:14] Death is necessary in order to be forgiven of our sins. The penalty for our sins needed to be paid. [00:22:24] And so God demonstrated in these signs, in these symbols what was needed to happen. And ultimately they point forward to the final solution that God would offer for our forgiveness and for atonement in himself, where he takes the sins of the world on himself as Jesus Christ our Savior, dies on a cross, takes on our sins so that forever the payment for sin would be paid. God doesn't sweep our sin under the rug. God doesn't ignore it. He pays for it. And he paid for it through the death of his son, the death of the Son of God. [00:23:08] This is what we need. We need a mediator. We need a sacrifice to stand between us and the Lord. And the Lord does that for us Himself. [00:23:19] We don't have to go out into the world and find a perfect man. [00:23:24] Go out into the world and hope, just hope, that we can find someone who is perfectly righteous. [00:23:30] God provides us that man, our king, who not only gave himself freely and gave his life for us, but he rules and reigns over us now, doing the next thing for us, which is number four. We need confidence in the battle, the battle against God's enemies. [00:23:54] Now, in this particular instance, at this particular time, Israel was called forth or was called to Go forth against the enemy enemies of the Lord, specifically the Philistines. [00:24:05] But like the animal sacrifices which are completed in Christ, so too is our physical warfare. [00:24:14] We do not go against the enemies of Christ any longer with the sword because the victory of Christ is in the cross. [00:24:24] How do we win and conquer? We could even say the enemies of Christ. [00:24:31] We preach to them the cross of Christ. [00:24:36] We preach to them the cross and we preach to them the Gospel which they either stumble over unto their own damnation or believe unto their salvation. God is at work in the preaching of the gospel. [00:24:54] If you want to think about the power of that, remember for a moment that most of us here, if we go back sometimes not very far in our family history, would still be serving the Dagons and the Baals and the Zeus and the rocks and the trees and any other unclean demon spirit that you might name. [00:25:18] Our family history, for most of us is tied to great amounts of bondage and slavery and idolatry. [00:25:30] But praise God, we are here this morning to worship the one true and living God. Because we were defeated and brought into glorious subjection to the king. And praise God, it was not through our death in ourselves, but through a death God gives to us on the cross. [00:25:53] We die in him. He dies for us and he gives to us his life. [00:26:00] We've been conquered even to the point of death, but not eternal death, but death leading to life because it was the death of Christ and the life of Christ. [00:26:12] And so we need confidence in this. Confidence against the evil one, confidence against the flesh, confidence against the world, confidence against the enemies of Christ. And we need to recognize that Christ has the victory demonstrated here in the Old Testament, completed in the New. And one day it will be consummated when he comes again to judge the living and the dead. [00:26:39] We need to preach the gospel, share the gospel, disciple others in the gospel of Christ, teaching them the cross so that they might have confidence in the battle and be more than conquerors. [00:26:54] Next, Samuel teaches us to be rememberers. He sets up this stone of remembrance. Ebenezer. He calls it a stone of help, a marker. [00:27:08] Once we have been saved in these ways, once we have found the forgiveness of God in the cross of Christ, once we've been brought forth from death into the newness of life, we find ourselves serving the one true living God. Let's remember it. [00:27:26] Let's remember it. We need to remember in our lives what God has done and pass it on to our children and to our neighbors. [00:27:35] Sixth, and lastly, we need to sit under the Judgment of the Lord through His servants, God rules over his kingdom. That was true in the Old Testament and it's true in the New. [00:27:50] God rules through his servants, chiefly through the Christ, who is the King of all man. But Jesus in turn uses a people to do his work, to establish his ministry. [00:28:09] Now that doesn't make God's servants perfect, as we will soon see. Samuel has his flaws, but he was still God's servant and was ordained to this task of judge, which God used mightily during the life of Samuel, didn't He? All the days we read of the life of Samuel, Israel had peace. [00:28:31] This continues on from the Old Testament through the New Testament in the ministry of your pastor and your elders. [00:28:39] Though we are also, like Samuel, a humble and imperfect beings. God has called us to judge, to lead you in his paths. You should pay attention to what we say, listen and learn as is fitting in the Lord. [00:28:57] And for those of us who are called to this ministry, may God be with us, humble us and cause us to trust in him as Hannah did and as Samuel did, leading always and only in the fear of the Lord, never in self serving ways, never in fearful ways. [00:29:19] And so to bring this full circle, I would suggest to you that we should pray for those that the Lord is raising up even now, for the seeds he's already planted and those that he will plant, for the seedlings that are currently growing and for those he is about to bring forward. [00:29:40] Luke 10:2 says, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. [00:29:51] This is a prayer that he answered in the Old Testament. It's a prayer he is answering now in this new in the era of the new covenant. [00:30:03] So pray. As I've mentioned, we can begin by praying for ourselves that God would humble our hearts and turn us away from false gods, false loves, false hopes, false fears, and help us to see Jesus as our only Savior. We can pray that God would draw us close to him, make us more like him, and therefore able to love others by helping them know and follow Jesus. [00:30:31] We must pray that he would make us disciples. [00:30:36] Disciples who are making disciples. Disciples who are making disciples. Who are making disciples. [00:30:42] This is our calling. [00:30:45] We should pray for those officers and future officers who would lead us, as well as every single person in the congregation of Israel as He brings us each into our own callings and with our own gifts. [00:31:02] We should pray that God would continue to be work outside the things that we cannot see, that he would be Raising up other disciple makers officers, as I mentioned, but also parents teaching their children, neighbors showing and telling the love of Christ to their communities, all the different kinds. [00:31:25] It's exciting to think about what God has already been doing outside of what we cannot see. [00:31:32] Our job, beloved, isn't to figure out his secrets and be anxious about the things he's doing, but to just pray and trust that he is at work. [00:31:44] Our job is to seek to be used by him, turning to him in repentance and faith and resting in Jesus, who has been given all authority in heaven on earth and is working in the world to bring many to Him. [00:32:00] Let's pray. [00:32:03] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the work that you do according to your great providence. We thank you that you never leave us alone, but that you are always governing all of your creatures and all of their actions, moving, deciding, prodding, pushing, changing, raising up and putting down. [00:32:23] Lord, we ask that in all the particulars of our lives you would help us to trust you, that you would help us to put away the bales and the astaroths, that you would help us to put away our love of money and the love of the flesh and the love of the world. [00:32:41] Lord, we ask that you would help us to put on the love of Christ, to know him more and to be more like him, and to disciple others in his name. [00:32:52] Lord, we ask that you would give us the confidence that we have in Christ to have victory over sin, to have strength for the temptations that come, to not fear the enemies who would seek to persecute your people and would see and who would be rebellious against you. [00:33:14] Let us not live as those who have a spirit of fear, but instead, Lord, give us love and peace and confidence and boldness in the work that you are doing. [00:33:26] We thank you, Lord, for raising up Samuel and the peace that you gave to Israel during this time. We thank you for his wise decisions, those that we hear about and those that we don't. We thank you for the prayers of Hannah that you answered and through which you brought such a great salvation. [00:33:44] We thank you for the King David, whom you eventually would establish as king over Israel, and for his son Jesus Christ, our Lord, who would forever be established as king over your people. [00:33:59] Lord, we pray in his name, believing in his perfect sacrifice for sin, believing ourselves to be dead to sin and alive to Christ. [00:34:10] And for those of us, Lord, who do not know the Lord or are unsure about our faith in him. Lord, we ask that you would be working in our hearts, that you would be stirring up that faith and repentance that we might have the strength in you to put away the false gods. To repent, to believe, to remember, to serve and to grow. [00:34:36] This is a work that you only can do. And that is why we turn only to you. [00:34:42] Neither trying to ignore you or control you or beat you or use you, but be humbled before you humble our hearts. O Lord, give us faith to believe. [00:34:56] We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.