The Word of the Lord

[00:00:00] You. [00:00:03] Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your protection. [00:00:08] We thank you that you hold us in your hand and nothing can separate us from you. Nothing can separate you from us, for we are guarded and protected and loved by you through Christ our Savior and the Spirit, who has given us this newness of life. We ask now that your Spirit would work again in opening our hearts and allowing us to see and believe and trust in the things that you have spoken. Lord, help us to put all of our confidence in your word as it is revealed in our passage this morning and in all of your Scriptures. Help us to be faithful in understanding it and applying it to our lives. [00:00:55] May we be encouragers of others in these things, and may you be glorified in all that you do. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. [00:01:06] Our passage this morning is a little bit longer, so I'll go ahead and let you sit down. You may be seated. And let's turn to First Samuel, chapter 15. [00:01:47] First Samuel 15. The Lord installed Saul in a series of stages. We could say there were sort of three big steps that he took in becoming king. And there are these stages in which Saul is being removed as the king. And we come to the second of those, the last one sadly being his death, which will come later on. And as you'll see, the rejection of Saul is tied very much to Saul's rejection of the Lord and his Word. [00:02:29] Let's hear God's word this morning from 1st Samuel 15. [00:02:34] And Samuel said to Saul, the Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people, Israel. Now therefore, listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts. I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. So Saul summoned the people and numbered them in Telaim, 200,000 men on foot and 10,000 men of Judah. And Saul came to the city of Amalek and lay in wait in the valley. Then Saul said to the Kenites, go, depart. Go down from the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them. For you showed kindness to all the people of Israel when they came up out of Egypt. So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites. And Saul defeated the Amalekites from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt. And he took Agag, the king of The Amalekites alive and devoted to destruction. All the people with the edge of the sword but Saul. And the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs and all that was good and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless, they devoted to destruction. [00:04:08] The word of the Lord came to Samuel. I regret that I made Saul king, for he has turned back from me, from following me and has not performed my commandments. And Samuel was angry and he cried to the Lord all night. [00:04:23] And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning, and it was told Samuel, Saul came to Carmel. And behold, he set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal. And Samuel came to Saul. And Saul said to him, blessed be to you, or blessed be you and to the Lord I have performed the commandment of the Lord. And Samuel said, what then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I heard? Saul said, they have brought them from the Amalekites. For the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God and the rest we have devoted to destruction. Then Samuel said to Saul, stop. I will tell you what the Lord said to me this night. And he said to him, speak. [00:05:16] And Samuel said, though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. And the Lord sent you on a mission and said, go devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed. Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? [00:05:40] Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what is evil in the sight of the Lord? And Saul said to Samuel, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag, the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. But the people took the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal. And Samuel said, has the Lord a great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? [00:06:15] Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king. [00:06:38] Saul said to Samuel, I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord in your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Now, therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may bow before the Lord. And Samuel said to Saul, I will not return with you, for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. As Samuel turned to go away, Saul seized the skirt of his robe and it tore. And Samuel said to him, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you. And also the glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man that he should have regret. [00:07:27] Then he said, I have sinned. Yet honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel, and return with me that I may bow before the Lord your God. [00:07:38] So Samuel turned back after Saul, and Saul bowed before the Lord. [00:07:44] Then Samuel said, bring here to me Agag, the king of the Amalekites. And Agag came cheerfully. Agag said, surely the bitterness of death is past. [00:07:55] And Samuel said, as your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women. And Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. [00:08:09] Then Samuel went to Ramah, and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. And Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death. But Samuel grieved over Saul, and the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel. [00:08:27] May God bless his word to us. [00:08:34] So there's a lot of things to think about, reflect on in this chapter. So many details that we won't be able to get to. But I want to encourage you to read the story perhaps once or twice more this week and see what else you might notice. [00:08:55] Pretty much every time I read this, I notice new things. Despite having gone through it many, many times, there's new things and new connections. I'd encourage you to do that. And in a couple of weeks we'll return again to this passage and focus particularly on this idea of regret. [00:09:14] We'll focus in a couple weeks on how we ought to understand what is going on here in Samuel 1 Samuel 15, where on the one hand we're told that the Lord doesn't have regret, and on the other hand we are told that he does regret certain things. [00:09:31] The short answer to this is that the Bible speaks of the emotions of God much like it speaks of the body of God. [00:09:41] God does not have a body. We know that it is not proper to speak of God as having a body. He is a spirit. [00:09:51] Nevertheless, the Bible does talk about God as being able to see things with his eyes or to work with his mighty hand and his outstretched arm. [00:10:03] In literary terms, we call these anthropomorphisms, right? [00:10:10] God describes his actions, not his nature, but he describes his actions in these sort of physical terms. [00:10:21] A similar thing can be said of God's emotions when God has said that God regrets or repents. And there's lots of this language throughout the Bible. It's not just here. God's speaking in a way that helps us to understand his actions and the way that he works towards us, the things that are part of his judgment and his goodness and other things. It's not speaking about his nature properly. Just as God does not have body parts like a man, he does not have emotions like a man. [00:10:55] That's a lot, right? And which is why we'll spend more time on that in a couple weeks. But I wanted to give you a little preview for that today. What we're focusing on is the word of the Lord, Hearing, listening, obedience. What is really the core of this chapter? [00:11:16] If you would like, you can turn with me to a small saying of Jesus in Matthew chapter 7. We also find it in Luke 6 Matthew 7, which encapsulates so much of what is so important to understand about this chapter. [00:11:36] In Matthew 7:24, Jesus says this. [00:11:42] Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. [00:11:52] And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. [00:12:03] And remember, the rock are those words of Jesus hearing and doing them. [00:12:08] Verse 26. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it. [00:12:29] 1st Samuel 15. If we only have two categories to use for the moment, we would say that Saul is a foolish man. Why? [00:12:40] Because he has not built his house, his kingdom, the house of Israel, the house of Saul. However you want to look at that, they all apply. He has not built them on the word of the Lord. [00:12:54] In hearing, in listening, in obeying. Throughout this chapter, the words of the Lord and also speaking and listening come up many times in Various different ways. [00:13:10] Even from the very beginning, from the very first verse we read that Samuel says to Saul, the Lord sent me to anoint you as king over his people. Now, therefore, listen to the words of the Lord. [00:13:24] He is to listen to the words of the Lord. And what is it that Samuel says? [00:13:30] He gives him a command, and it is a command that comes from the Lord as general command that comes from the Lord as one who is about to execute justice against his enemies and against his people's enemies. He is called, in verse two, the Lord of hosts. This describes the Lord with all of his mighty angels. [00:13:56] And what is it he has seen from his heavenly throne? He has not seen a simple people just doing their best, scraping things by, trying to live out as best they can. He's seen an evil people, sinners they're called later, who destroyed Israel or sought to destroy them when they came up out of the land of Egypt. [00:14:22] You remember when Israel, Israel left Egypt, they left not as a great and powerful army of the world, but as people who were just released from slavery. [00:14:34] They grabbed what they could, they got out of Dodge, and they're moving through the desert without a lot of resources, at least internal resources. [00:14:46] They had, of course, the Lord their king, who provided for them at every corner. And they had this promise that had been promised long time ago, that those who blessed Israel would be blessed and those who cursed and came against Israel would be cursed. It is a mark of God's love for his people. [00:15:06] And so Amalek did not hear this. [00:15:10] And when Israel came out of Egypt, they opposed them. And very grievously later, here we read of King Agag. In this same spirit, when Samuel executes justice at the end of the chapter, he says, as your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women. [00:15:35] This is God's executing his perfect righteous judgment. You see in Samuel's statement there, yes, something gruesome and horrible, but something that is also balanced and fair. [00:15:52] The point is that the Lord is exercising his justice. It's not just random anger or acts of vengeance out of just being overly emotional or something like that. The Lord is destroying those who have destroyed others and not just Israel alone. [00:16:14] Even those who are weak like infants and children, as well as God's people who were at that time weak as well. [00:16:24] And so God calls Saul to finish the work. He had been patient with Amalek, with the Amalekites. And so Saul summons the people, Verse four, another listening term. And we could translate this. He caused them to hear. [00:16:43] He caused them to hear. He summoned the people and he numbered them and he commands them. And things seem to go well to Saul is showing a certain amount of obedience here. He responds. He summons the people together. He shows grace and compassion to the Kenites. It's a scene sort of similar to when the Lord goes to destroy the evil in Sodom and Gomorrah and he rescues Lot and his family out before that destruction. [00:17:15] I'll say now that these pictures in the Old Testament are. Are very limited to a particular time and a particular purpose. What God is doing in these moments is he's showing what judgment will be like when the Lord Jesus comes again. [00:17:31] These are foretastes of the coming judgment, which will be strong, which will not hold back, which God will perfectly and forever take care and end all sin and all who oppose him and his people. [00:17:49] Until that time, God is forbearing, he is patient. He is calling people to turn and to repent and to flee. [00:17:59] Even as he has given Saul many chances, he has given, he gives us as well. [00:18:06] So Saul says to the Kenites, he encourages them to leave. And they do. They leave and they depart from the Amalekites. And then we read in verse seven that Saul defeated the Amalekites and devoted to destruction all the people with the edge of the sword. But verse nine, Saul and the people. Notice both those words. Saul and the people spared. [00:18:33] We could say the best person or the highest ranking person and the best animals. [00:18:39] Saul and the people spared agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen, the fatted calves and the lambs. And all that was good, they would not devote them utterly to destruction. All that was despised and worthless, they devoted to destruction. But that which they saw as good, as valuable, as important, they kept from themselves. And that right there shows you the sand that Saul is building his kingdom on. [00:19:09] Saul is not building the kingdom on the word of the Lord, but on what he perceives to be important, to be solid, to be powerful. He's making the same mistake that the people made when they called him to be their king and when they asked God to give them a king. Like the nations, the nations rule and reign by wealth, by power, by great armies, by all these things of the world, God rules with them. Apart from them, it doesn't matter to him. He rules just because he rules. He can use a lot, he can use a little. He can save by many, he can save by few. As we heard back in 1st Samuel 14, the Lord is not dependent on economies of scale or sharp Blades or many people. He's not dependent on glory. He's not dependent on good animals. He's not dependent on kings. [00:20:14] He doesn't need these things because he has everything that he needs in himself. [00:20:20] And he will establish the kingdom of God not on weaker things that him than Himself, but on his own strength and in his own ways. And he will demonstrate this over and over and over again throughout the Scriptures and here in the Old Testament, in this temporal way, in a way that's tied to the land in this moment in time. God is drawing a picture for us. He's building a model to help us to understand this. [00:20:51] About the kingdom of God as it is expressed here, and about the kingdom of God as it will come to its full fruition when it expands over all the world, all peoples and languages and tribes, tongues and nations. [00:21:06] When we see the kingdom of God moving throughout the world, not through the power of the sword, but through the power of the word, a word that is spoken that says to look at the cross, the weakest, most despised thing, to look at the death of the Son of God and find our salvation there. [00:21:26] The world that builds its house on sand looks at that and says, that's ridiculous. That's foolishness. You can't establish kingdoms and kings by crucifying them. [00:21:39] God says, watch me. [00:21:42] And all over the world now, people profess his name and are even willing to. Who die for him in allegiance to him, out of loyalty to him, because they know who he is. Because we know who he is and what he brings and what he does, and how strong that rock is. [00:22:02] The rock of ages. [00:22:05] The word of the Lord is strong. [00:22:10] Saul is trying to build it on other things. And the people are trying to build it on. On other things. They save the king, they spare him. They spare the best of the sheep and the oxen. [00:22:23] Later, we read about how when Samuel goes to find Saul, he discovers that Saul has built some kind of monument to himself. [00:22:34] This is what's going on. [00:22:37] He's not listening. [00:22:39] The Lord of hosts, the Creator of the universe, the God who made him, anointed him and called him to do these things. He's not listening. He's not paying attention. [00:22:55] And so Saul is going to be removed because the Lord wants us to understand that his kingdom must be established by his word and by a king that heeds that word. [00:23:11] So in verse 12, we read that Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul. [00:23:16] It was told Saul came to Carmel. And behold, he set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went to Gilgal. [00:23:24] And then what do we see? [00:23:27] A bunch of excuses. [00:23:30] And it's like the spin room here. As Saul and Samuel have this conversation, it gets so bad that eventually Saul stopped just stop talking. [00:23:45] Let's look at this a little bit. Verse 13. Samuel comes to Saul. Saul says to him, I think he's kind of trying to get ahead of the. Get ahead of the problem, so to speak. He says, blessed be to you, to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord. All of a sudden it's Lord, Lord, Lord. [00:24:06] Samuel says, probably still angry. [00:24:12] What then is the bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear? [00:24:18] You know, this is, you know, the classic, you know, your hand in the cookie jar. You know, when your parent comes around the corner and you, uh, I didn't take the cookies. [00:24:28] I see your hand. [00:24:32] He hears the sheep. He hears the oxen. They're there. And then what he says in verse 15, they. The people have brought them from the Amalekites. For the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord. The rest we have devoted to destruction. He starts to twist the commandment now, just like happened in the garden. And that Satan and all the excuses with Adam and Eve. There's this, well, did you really say, and I sort of did it, and blah, blah, blah, and all these things. And Samuel then says in verse 16, Stop, I will tell you what the Lord said to me this night. And he says to him, speak. And then this really remarkable statement in verse 17, though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? [00:25:26] The Lord anointed you king over Israel, and the Lord sent you on a mission. [00:25:33] This is really interesting to me because there's some things in this chapter that seem like Saul thinks highly of himself, right? He built this monument to himself. He's disobeying the commandments of the Lord. Perhaps he thinks that he has a better way, that he knows how to do things right? Perhaps he thinks that the Lord is being a little not righteous in his actions against the Amalekites. Whatever is in his head, Saul has decided that he knows better than the Lord in some ways. It seems he thinks very highly of himself. [00:26:15] But he thinks highly of himself only when he is disconnecting himself to the Lord or from the Lord. [00:26:24] His problem, which, or one of his problems is that he sees himself as little, as little when he remembers or when he forgets the thing that he's called to do. [00:26:40] Saul seems to me to be a person who is scrambling to be important, to feel important. [00:26:50] He starts out this his journey. We have a little bit of too modern of a word, but whatever. He starts out this journey right in the baggage hiding as the people are calling Saul to be the king. He's tucked down in the baggage and then he stands up like this NBA player, a head taller than everybody else, and walks through, right? [00:27:14] He is often afraid, he seems often ashamed. He's not sure what to do with his own body and with his. With his call and all of these things. And yet instead of just trusting in the Lord and finding his confidence in him, he scrambles around to do all of these other things. We saw him make these rash oaths and commanding this army not to eat while they're on the run. Or we see him being willing to devote Jonathan to destruction, his own son, without taking a moment to just pause, take a breath and think, what other options has the Lord given me here? [00:27:56] And here we see him just spinning and making excuses and trying to. Trying to make all this, this work, when all he has to do is remember that he has been anointed by God. [00:28:11] He has been given the charge by God himself to be the head over the tribes of Israel. He has been anointed as king. He has a mission. [00:28:22] In this way, it doesn't matter what his height is or how strong he is, how good looking or not good looking he is, how what his relationships are with the other nations or how important he is or isn't in the eyes of people, none of that matters. His wealth doesn't matter. His power doesn't matter. His influence doesn't matter. None of it matters if you have been anointed by God to be king. [00:28:49] If God has anointed you to be king and has called you to do something, that's all that you need. [00:28:58] We see the Lord doing a similar thing so many places. But one example that comes to mind is when he sends out his apostles, people that were previously scared, some of them uneducated, some of them not thought of very highly in the world. And he says, I've anointed you. [00:29:17] He pours out His Holy Spirit on them and he says, when you come before kings and councils and when people want to put you to death, don't worry, I'll tell you what to say. [00:29:28] Don't worry. I'll provide for what you need. Don't worry. My word will go forth. The work will be done. Why? [00:29:35] Because God is doing it. Because he's anointed, because he's doing the work. That's all that Samuel needs to remember, and it's all that we need to remember, too. [00:29:46] All that Saul needs to remember is that he has been anointed by the Lord, even as we have been anointed by the Lord to be, as Peter describes, a kingdom of priests, the bride of Christ, the glory of God, holy ones, saints, people who have been ransomed, people who have been given a redemption that has been purchased by the very blood of the Son of God himself. This is who we are. And that's all that we need to act, to move, to be confident. The world will say, you need this, and you need this, and you need to scramble and find these things. [00:30:32] And the Lord can use those things, but he can also not. He is what we need. And so we need to hear and we need to listen. [00:30:43] That's what Saul is forgetting, and that's why he thinks of himself as so little. [00:30:50] He forgets the anointing, the Lord. [00:30:55] Saul calls him out in verse 19. Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? [00:31:01] He describes particularly his actions. Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord? [00:31:10] Saul's got it all backwards. When they had access to the spoils in the last chapter, like the honey dripping on the ground, he's like, don't eat it. And now when there's all these animals around, he says, take it. [00:31:23] And you of course, notice, you know, as there's all the blame, ship shifting that happens in the Garden of Eden after the fall. The similar thing is happening here. It's all the people, the people, the people. You know, much like Aaron said when they made the golden calf, I got forced into this, right? When just before Saul was commanding all the people to come and to listen, he summoned them and they came just before that. He called them all to put them under this. This curse, which they all heeded. [00:31:58] Saul did not have to listen to the voice of the people. And indeed these things were in his own heart as well. [00:32:07] He makes more excuses in verse 20. I have obeyed. I've done this and I've done that. And now he gives a reason for why these things happened. So that they might be devoted to destruction, he says, or so that they might be sacrificed. [00:32:21] So the Lord says, I want you to do this. And Saul's excuse is, well, I thought I'd do this for you. [00:32:30] For you. I did it for you. [00:32:32] I made this great sacrifice for you. [00:32:36] I thought you'd be happy. [00:32:40] And Samuel says, in this poetic, prophetic way, words we should remember has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings, as sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord. [00:32:57] Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams. Rebellion. It's a big deal. It's as the sin of divination, presumption. It's a big deal. It's as iniquity and idolatry. [00:33:18] And not only do we have these explanations, but we have the consequence. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord. The Lord has rejected you from being king. [00:33:29] Saul lies. He spins the truth. He blame shifts. He lacks repentance. He doesn't acknowledge what he's done. He doesn't acknowledge its effect on the people the way he has put them into danger. He doesn't seek the grace of God. He continues to be focused on himself and the things that he needs. He wants Samuel to prop him up politically. Samuel refuses. Saul reaches out, grabs his robe and it tears. And Saul. Samuel then uses it as a sign and says, the Lord has torn the kingdom from you. [00:34:09] He begs him to go with him again. And Samuel does go with him this time. But we see it's not to prop up Saul, as I think Saul is hoping for, but it's to do the job that Saul failed to do, to bring justice to Israel and to destroy Agag, who himself is not repentant, who himself is not sorrowful for the things that he has done, or the children he's killed or the ways he's hurt Israel. He's alive and the problem's over. He walks into the room with all this confidence. Surely the bitterness of death is past. It's much like Saul saying, I've obeyed the voice of the Lord. We're all good here, right? [00:34:59] Samuel's going to have none of it. Why? Because he's a true prophet of the Lord and he speaks the word of the Lord. Oh, if only Saul had listened. [00:35:14] False piety or halfway piety or blame shifting piety or changing the words and commandments of God is never a substitute for real obedience. [00:35:32] And when we see and examine Saul's actions here, if you're like me, you can see yourself doing these various things at various times, both potentially and for sure. In the past, these things resonate so much with us because they're in us, because we do them. We ought not to stand here and look at Saul and sit in judgment over him and say, what a fool. If he'd only obeyed the word of the Lord. Like me, right? This is not the point that we are trying to get. [00:36:10] A little bit of fear perhaps would be healthy here, a little bit of self examination. Standing before the Lord, our God, our Maker and standing, saying, what have I done? [00:36:22] What am I doing? [00:36:25] Especially for those of us who belong to the Lord Jesus, who have been made holy like our Heavenly Father is holy, who are called to love him and abide in his love as he has poured it out just so richly on us. [00:36:41] The sins that we commit as Christians in some ways are even worse than the ones that we committed before we were Christians. Because we sin against the Gospel. [00:36:54] Instead of adorning our lives with the works that flow from the gospel, the fruit of the Spirit, we fall back into these passions of former ignorance. [00:37:07] We forget and we disobey. [00:37:12] The good news for us is that we have a king that is not like Saul. [00:37:18] The good news for us is that our king, King Jesus, has built a foundation for the kingdom of God that cannot fail. [00:37:31] Because as the Scriptures say, He Himself is the cornerstone. [00:37:39] He Himself has laid the foundation. He Himself, Jesus is called the Word of God. [00:37:49] And he gives to us the Word of God. So if our faith is in him, even the faith as small as a mustard seed, we are safe and secure. Not to go sin and not to be lawless, but to come in repentance and seek him and trust Him. Trust him and find assurance when our hearts convict us of our own. Walking away from the Lord, hearing the word of the Lord, obeying the Word of the Lord always and only begins with trusting him, with faith in Him. [00:38:30] And not just faith to issue good commandments which you can have complete faith that he does, but faith in him as our Redeemer, faith in him as our Savior. [00:38:44] Because God is not just a lawgiver. [00:38:48] God also in His Son, establishes Jesus as king by taking on the curse of the law for us. [00:39:00] He doesn't just give to us his law. He saves us from his law. [00:39:09] Not unto unrighteousness, but he saves us from its wrath. He saves us from its curse. He saves us from its shame and from its punishment. [00:39:20] God promises us that he has provided for us a time that we might rest in Jesus and find salvation in in Him. [00:39:31] But I have to tell you what the Scripture says, that we might have a solid foundation, and that's this, that there is coming a time when God will destroy the world. [00:39:45] There is coming a time when Jesus will come and he will come in judgment. [00:39:52] You do not want to wait until it's too late. [00:39:57] You do not want to wait to build your life on Jesus and his words until he's here and time's up. [00:40:09] The picture of the Amalekites and the destruction of them, as terrible as it is, is fair and it's just. Just as Jesus judgment at the end of the world will be. [00:40:25] Now is the time of salvation. Now is the day for faith and repentance. Now is the time to build our houses on the word of the Lord, on Jesus Christ. [00:40:39] You do not want to wait until the rain falls and the wind blows and the house that you have built is swept away. [00:40:50] Instead, be one of the living stones built by God into a house fit for him. [00:40:57] Let's put our faith in Christ, our King. Let's pray. [00:41:03] Our heavenly Father, we thank you for the work of Jesus Christ and we praise you. [00:41:09] It is very tempting as human beings and in our sinfulness to sit in judgment over you, to decide that you should or should should not command this or that thing, that you should or should not do this or that thing. Oh, Lord, we ask that you would humble our hearts, submit ourselves to you, and trust you for all that you say and all that you have done. We ask, Lord, that you would bless us in the work of Jesus Christ and that we would. That we would grasp tightly to. To him. [00:41:44] Because you tell us that all who come to him will receive rest, will receive forgiveness, will receive healing, will receive even resurrection from the dead for us who are in Jesus Christ. Your scriptures say there is no condemnation, and that is our great hope. [00:42:05] Lord, help us not to stumble over the gospel, but to build our lives on it, knowing that Jesus is all who he says he is and has done all of your holy will as our mediator and as a great sacrifice for us. We have confidence in you. And so, Lord, we ask that you would anoint us with your spirit, that you would give us your grace and your gifts, that we might walk confidently in our lives to do all that you have called us to do in our callings as fathers, as mothers, as our calling as children and learners, as employees and employee employers, as people, with all of these various hats that you have given us to wear, we ask that you would help us to wear them in the confidence of our King, knowing that we share in his life, in his crown, in his glory, and that you give us all that we need in him. [00:43:15] Lord, we pray that this message would go out into the world and the work of judgment through the cross and the work of resurrection through the cross would be manifest through many people's lives. Both here in our city, in our community, communities among our neighbors and throughout the world. [00:43:35] And we pray here in town for our sister churches, for others who are preaching the gospel faithfully. We ask that you would encourage them in their work, that you would strengthen them in their callings, that you would gift and enable them to fulfill the mission that you have given to them. [00:43:54] Lord, we also pray for your work in faraway places this morning, for the work in Far East Asia. We ask that you would be the with the brothers and sisters there as they learn and teach and worship and spread the good news of the Gospel. [00:44:16] Lord, we thank you for all that you are doing, and we ask that you would open our eyes to help us to see it and trust it more, to trust you. For all that we need. We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.