Shall we open in prayer? Father indeed, as we have been singing, our debt to our Savior is an inestimable debt. We cannot quantify it. We only know that it has been paid.
We know deep within ourselves that our debt has been paid by our Savior who went to the cross and that He is our King. He is our King now and He will be our King through the ages. We pray that as we consider your word this morning that your spirit would guide and direct and bring those things home to our hearts which we need. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
So this morning we will continue. This is my third message on the book of 1 Samuel. And eminently readable book, of course we should all read our Bibles anyway. But as I have said in previous occasions, sometimes when you feel that you need something that isn't going to force you to think very, very hard and something that's going to draw you in, in this case to a historical account, relatively easily, and you know that you should be reading your Bible.
This I would say is a part of the Bible that will actually help you read the Bible. It is a very engaging portion of the Bible. So this morning we're going to be considering the parts of chapters 8 through 10 of the book of 1 Samuel. And the verse that I have extracted part of chapter 8 verse 6 of verse Samuel is the title of my message.
Make us a king to judge us. Make us a king to judge us. Two distinct words. I've put them there in Hebrew, not that I can read Hebrew, but I think it looks beautiful.
It's a beautiful looking language. And they are distinct words and they have the meanings that we would understand in English based on my research. In preparing for this message I studied and prayed and then studied some more and then prayed some more. And this morning I got up and I took my handful of vitamins, many of the letters of the alphabet and dietary supplements that have complicated names.
And I washed them down with three cups of strong coffee to try to get a little bit, shall we say, pumped up. For this morning I put on my favorite Chinese Thai, which came to my mind because of the Chinese Bible study last night, the ESL Bible study, which actually had a powerful effect on me yesterday evening and carrying on into this morning. So I have my Shang-Mao Taion translated that literally means bear cat. That's how you say panda in Chinese.
I checked. So we can often think that in the context of ministry, people who are all in ministry, some of it might be a little more visible than other types of ministry going on through and of this congregation and its members who are actually no, there is no official membership here. But a lot of unofficial ministries going on and some of the most important things I've come to believe over the decades. Some of the most important things that happen happen behind the scenes and that came home to me yesterday evening as I was involved with that ESL study last night.
We were in Luke chapter six and I know I'm talking about something that's maybe not directly related to the message this morning, but I just want to share regarding that because it was such an experience. It really was quite an experience last night. And you know, you might think that ministries that perhaps have some profile and are known in the assembly are things that people think more about, perhaps. And as I say, there can be things happening behind the scenes and some of these ministries perhaps take somebody's concentration, somebody's preparation.
I have never actually felt that with the ESL Bible study. I walk into that Bible study or sit down to that Bible study cold with very little preparation, having confidence that the Word of God speaks for itself. And we will be reading the Word of God. That's often my mental fallback position is that we will be reading the Word of God.
And coming to it last night, we we came to those passages in the sermon on the plane in the book of Luke in chapter six where the Lord is warning against the lifestyle of the rich, the full and the happy because there may well be according to the teaching of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, one may fully expect that those who live lifestyle of fullness and superficial happiness and carelessness will be called to account. And then the following passage deals with love for our enemies. And one of the participants, one of the most active participants spoke up and said, you know, this part contradicts that part. And proceeded to, I would say, throw a grenade into the ESL Bible study.
And my heart was almost sinking as she was doing that. And I sent up a prayer to the Lord in the moment because I knew I would need grace to answer this, this objection. And I thought, should I do this to sort of keep my mouth from dropping as she proceeded to tear down the Bible in front of the group? And I set up my prayer for grace, which was answered and I answered to the best of my God given ability.
And I thought, phew, you know, I got through that one, so to speak. The Lord had, I think, been there in that. And then, and then someone spoke up, someone whom we have known for some years, who is a Christian. And that young lady spoke up and said, may I share something?
She said, I have been going through months of difficulty, months of personal difficulty. And I came to this passage in Luke that we are in the middle of, I came to this passage of Luke. And God spoke to me. God brought this passage home to my heart, she said.
And she proceeded to share with us how God had brought her through that very difficult situation and experience and how it was resolved in such a marvelous and loving way in her life and in her situation. And it was a very powerful testimony and it was very personal. And that did more to answer the other person's attempt to tear down the Bible than anything I could ever have said. And so the two things had happened, that the word had been examined and considered and exposited and personal testimony had been brought as to how that word, that portion of God's word, had changed someone's life.
And that young lady declared and told us then that that passage and that resolution of that matter had resulted in her sleeping properly for the first time in some months. That at the resolution of the matter, through God's ministry, through his word, she slept for the first time in months. She said she slept for 13 hours. That can happen.
When God brings a resolution of a matter, it is God's resolution of the matter. It is the work of God to do that. That is not something that any amount of Bible study preparation can bring about. But I felt after that study and David McDonald was there and others had someone within this congregation shared as well about a related personal experience.
That after it was over, I felt that my soul was resonating with joy. I felt that you go into an ESL or any kind of a Bible study and you prepare yourself to give of yourself in some level because it is teaching. It is sort of an expenditure in some sense of mental and emotional energy and hopefully spiritual power. And I came away profoundly blessed.
I came away strengthened. I came away amazed at what God had just done and what he had done in someone's life and how he had brought that person to that study at just the right moment and a person who actually was using exactly the same passage in Luke chapter 6 to resolve a problem in their life. And that explanation and that account and that sharing that personal testimony of what God did in her life was a very powerful thing. And I went away having been ministered to more than anything.
So I just wanted to share that at the beginning that there are many different kinds of ministry. And in this case, I certainly came away having been ministered to and that was a wonderful thing. It is very human to want to have guidance in our lives. It is very human to want to have human guidance in our lives.
And so we're coming up to item four here by way of history. We have thought about Hannah as an anxious wife, Eli as an ailing priest, Israel as an arrogant army that failed in their initial experience. They failed in their initial attempt to use God as a talisman as one might fully expect. One cannot do that.
And we're coming to the anointing of Saul considering chapters 8 through 10 this morning. And that is a very interesting, like all of first Samuel, a very interesting and instructive part of the Bible that has been given to us on purpose. Of course, it's been given to us on purpose deliberately. There is instruction, there is message, there is information, there is truth, there is spiritual power to be found.
That previous slide was a little outline from David Poss and Bible Expositor who passed away in May of this year at around the age of 90. But this one is mine and we see in chapters 8 through 10, the people of Israel begging for a Kingly judge or a judicial king. It's kind of they're looking for a couple of aspects here in terms of their leadership. Then we see that there is searching on the part of the future King Saul and he ends up being the one who is found.
And then there is the anointing Samuel will anoint Saul. And I have to think as I read that passage that one of the most surprised people in this section of the Bible, chapter 8 through 10, one of the most surprised and amazed people is Saul himself in all of this. Though he did commune with Samuel for a time. And finally we have the presenting of this man.
And he is what some have said. He said man's choice, the sort of human, the obvious human choice for a king. And there he is being presented as their king and being tall. What constitutes leaders, followers and nations?
Well, I remember reading about someone who reviewed scholarship applications to universities. Big stack of applications. And of course you read within such applications the references, the ad vocations, the support of external referees for the applicants. And I have been called upon from time to time to write up such recommendations for people from time to time.
And so when you are sitting on a committee that reviews all of these scholarship applications, I was reading about someone who said we go through this large number of applications for scholarships. And you would be surprised the number of recommenders who will say that the applicant is a natural leader, a natural leader. Out of a big stack of applications you have all of these leaders. Remarkable, remarkable percentage of leaders.
And this person was writing that they finally came across an application in which it was actually admitted that the applicant was not a natural born leader, but was an excellent follower. Well, that was a new one. Maybe that was the only one written like that in the entire stack of scholarship applications. Not everyone is a natural born leader.
Questions of what makes a good leader. That's a valid question. It's just as valid to ask what makes a good follower. And when you put those two things together, not only in the Old Testament context, but in the New Testament context, when you put those two things together you have some corporate body politic.
In the Old Testament, a nation made up of the children of God under a leader. There are different forms of leadership in the Old Testament. Or in the New Testament context and concept and biblical portrayal, we have a church, a local assembly. When you put together these elements.
And you might expect from common sense that if you have a weak leader, that there is going to be weakness in that, using the word loosely national entity, the Bible does refer to the people of God as having their citizenship in heaven. However, it's not an earthly politic. And so we, on the other hand, know and have by common sense that no matter how good the leader is, I call them the rank and file. In some places you might say members of the congregation.
We don't actually have a roster for the people who come to this building. But we have those who are in our congregation in our assembly. And if those regular people are not following the Lord and are in no sense disciples of the Lord individually, then of course you would fully expect that that assembly, that congregation is going to go nowhere fast and is not going to bear. Any kind of testimony that would have any strength to the rest of the world.
It is inherently weak by virtue of the weakness of the followers. A couple of good quotes. This is in one place attributed Abraham Lincoln in another place attributed to Argy Ingersoll. I don't know who that is, but it may be that Abraham Lincoln was quoting it appears Argy Ingersoll.
It's a good quote, an interesting quote from a man who is using this quote Abraham Lincoln who bore his presidency. I would say with a great deal of humility. A great deal of humility. Nearly all men can stand adversity.
But if you want to test a man's character, give him power. A very good quotation and a very perceptive statement regarding what power can do when a leader takes on new power. I have to confess that in some ways I'm a big fan of Margaret Thatcher. And she had a PhD in chemistry.
She came from very humble societal beginnings and she was a person of tremendous willpower and work ethic and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Like all people she was not perfect. She also had a dry sense of humor as many British people do. Being powerful is like a lady.
If you have to tell people you are, you aren't. That's a good one. There's a sense of conscious lessness of being a leader. That if you are overly conscious of your own leadership position and you then expect people and you're watching whether, am I going to get the kind of acknowledgement that I'm hoping for here and being a leader?
You have the wrong attitude. There is a conscious lessness to being a leader. And Margaret Thatcher is dead right on that. What is our, maybe, you know, we have the word in the title in 1 Samuel 8 or 6.
The word king. We have the word judge. So let's consider a little bit the human point of view, maybe on these things as opposed to divine principles. Human beings have historically always desired to have strong political leadership.
And no doubt part of that human desire is simply that it is somebody I can see. It is easier to follow somebody that I can see as opposed to someone that I cannot see. Even though that is the case, perhaps. The divine principle that we find obviously throughout the scripture is that the believer, the child of God in a context, is to have individual and corporate faith in God.
And God is invisible. That is inherently in some sense harder to do. And it is exactly what we are called to do. There is a sense in which, especially when the Old Testament where the children of God tend to think that if we have a king to fight for us, that things will be better.
The warping wolf of scripture, the thrust of the teaching of scripture both for the believer and for those ancient children of God, is that God fights with you. He fights with you. That is the main thrust of scripture. As you will read in chapter 8 when they begged for a king, they included the, to their own incrimination.
They included the phrase like the other nations. Hello? What did you just say? You want a king so that you can be like the other nations, the nations around you?
That's exactly what you're not supposed to be like. You have just incriminated yourself. There is a sense of, yeah, I like to be cool. They're cool.
They have guys that wear crowns and have amazing clothes and sit on thrones and have a lot of glory associated with them. Maybe if we have that kind of thing, the motivation for that being to be like them, that is not that kind of seeking of earthly glory, prima facie on the face of it, is not what the believer should be about. It's not what the child of God should be about. God's children should not be concerned with their corporate glory.
They should be concerned with glorifying God, obviously. What about the other aspect? The other aspect is the human expectation that with regard to judging, with regard to discernment, with regard to guidance, perhaps we might say life guidance, moral guidance, spiritual guidance, well, there's a great deal written down, isn't there? To expect that this Judge, Hifen King would interpret the laws for them.
And I put in single quotes, we can't. What do you mean you can't? The divine injunction of command to us and to them is that we should study the law for ourselves. We should study the word of God for ourselves and find out what it says.
Once you know what it says, you can think about what it means. That is why God gave you a brain. You have an incredibly good brain. I would say that those who would say that I really don't ask me to do that.
I can't help but think that that is, in large measure, nothing but laziness. Am I lazy about it sometimes? Yes, I am. Laziness is a human failure.
It is part of our sinful nature and we should not listen to it. We should not be lazy. I believe that we live in an increasingly, I have to say on a political vein, which is dangerous to go into. We live in an increasingly socialist society in which, in which indolence and sitting around and looking to the government to take care of you, is actually as a mentality growing and growing and growing.
That is not good. That is not good. It encourages laziness. And perhaps someone is going to take me to task about that later, but I would stand by that statement that there is nothing godly about sitting around.
There is nothing godly about being lazy, either physically or in this case, I am talking about mentally. Henry Ford said, the hardest work that anyone can do is to think. And he said, that is why so few people do it. Thinking is hard work.
God expects you to think. In terms of judging, we have the tendency for, we tend to be looking toward external arbitration. We like to see somebody else decide our moral dilemmas. We like to say, I really, you know, the discernment here is lacking.
Well, I would say, you know, check the written law, consider it prayerfully. Check the word of God. Consider the word of God carefully. God has promised to give you wisdom if you ask for it.
He put that in his word, in the book of James. Take it seriously. Don't underrate the possibility that God can help you with moral questions. The Bible is obviously a book that has a great deal to do with what is right and wrong.
And I think we would all agree that that is not always black and white. And we need discernment and guidance, especially, especially in human relationships. And the word of God has much to say about human relationships. That's one of the things that came out last night.
I was talking in the study about, you know, the aspect of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It turns out there's the same expression in Chinese. But it doesn't have the eye part. It's tooth for a tooth.
They have the same thing in their collection of Proverbs. It's the aspect of knowing that if you damage, you may well suffer damage in an organized society. You may suffer the consequences of deleterious action toward others. Yes.
What about human relationships? What about, as it says in Luke chapter 6, loving your enemies? Oh, that is not so easy. That is profoundly challenging.
That gets into the realm of human relationships. And the Lord Jesus ends that paragraph with be merciful in Luke 6. Because God has been merciful to you, not tooth for tooth. You need discernment.
You need wisdom. You need grace for these things. That's why we need to return to the word often and find spiritual guidance in our lives, in our daily lives. Human expectation, again, perhaps don't ask me to be some kind of a moral whistle blower.
I don't, I'm a, people are cowards. People do not like to call out such things that are evil. The instruction of scripture to the earthly children of God, you do it. You call them out.
You identify these things that are evil in your congregation. But the main thing, the main thing is don't do those things yourself. That's the main thing. So having thought a bit about judges and kings and their function, I just take you back to Moses' parting words near the end of the book of Deuteronomy.
Let me read these things to you in connection with the value of the word of God to these people. This is for these people who are about to ask for a king. If thou shalt harken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes, which are written in this book of the law. And if thou turn unto the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, for this commandment which I command thee this day is not hidden from the neither is it far off.
It's not in heaven that thou should say, who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it. Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou should say, who shall go over the sea for us and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it. But the word is very nigh unto the in thy mouth and in thy heart that thou mayest do it. See, I have set before thee this day life and good and death and evil.
So this was true of them. It was true of the earthly children of God as we read their exploits and perils from the Pentateuch coming up from Exodus into first Samuel and beyond. And it is true of us today. The word of God is not hidden from us.
And it is very true to say that it is not far off from us. We should access it. We should access the word of God. We are better positioned to access the word of God than possibly anyone in history.
I would remind everyone from last time that Samuel himself did perform this function, and this was something that happened without a king. Now Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life and experienced a judge. He used to go annually on circuit to Bethel and Gilgal and Misma, and he judged Israel in all these places. Then his return was to Ramaph, or his house was there, and there he judged Israel, and he built there an altar to the Lord.
This was the man that God had given them. And we come to this key verse in my message this morning, and the examination of the legitimacy of this request. So we have the first of my four-point parts here, begging for a Kingly judge or a judicial king. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Rama, and they said to him, behold, you have grown old, and your sons do not walk in your ways.
Now a point of king for us to judge us like all the nations. But the thing was displeasing in the sight of Samuel when they said, give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, listen to the voice of the people. In regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me.
Here's a verse that means a lot to me and has meant a lot to me over the years. Give us a king to judge us like the other nations. But the strength of the children of God is fundamentally, inherently, not to be like the strength of others, other nations that will surround us. Second Corinthians, chapter 10.
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. It's such an interesting verse. You have things that are described as strongholds that need to be pulled down.
And Paul is saying it sounds like a word, but it's not like a regular word. You have things that are built up that need to be cast down, but they're not physical things. It sounds like a war, but it isn't. High things, the world puts up on a pedestal, and then we put them up on a pedestal, and we get dragged into that.
No, those high things actually exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. They're not neutral. They're in opposition to what we should be glorifying in our hearts, in our minds, even in our imaginations. Isn't that interesting?
Everything down to the level here in is the challenge that we talk about in the Beatitudes. You know, you have the Exodus chapter 20, 10 commandments. Okay, not too hard. I didn't steal.
I said, don't steal. I don't steal. Okay. Yeah.
Then you come to the Beatitudes. God says, Jesus says, speaking, the divine Son of God speaking. We see, I see, into your heart. God sees what is in your heart.
How do you feel about that? How do you feel about your covetousness that is inside of your heart? Is that obedience to Christ? You haven't actually done anything.
It is not obedience to Christ. That is exactly the kind of stronghold that needs to be destroyed. And it is not destroyed with earthly dynamite. It is destroyed by the power of God.
So let's move on to my next one of the four. And it's almost amusing. We have Saul's son of Kish. His father was probably a donkey breeder and had quite a prosperous business.
In relation to that, his father being Kish and the donkeys of Kish, Saul's father were lost. And Kish said to Saul, his son, now take one of the servants with thee and the rise and go see the donkeys. Verse five. And when they were come unto the land of Zuf, that's where Hannah's husband was from.
Saul said to his servant that was with him, come and let us return. Let my father leave caring for the donkeys and take thought for us. Good thinking. And then we have Samuel.
So Saul has been found. He went looking for something for purely secular reasons. And he has been found by the man of God. And as for thy donkeys that were lost three days ago, set not thy mind on them.
And they are found. And on whom is all the desire of Israel? Is it not on thee? And on all thy father's house indeed.
And he is anointed. And I would say he may be the most amazed a person around. In 1 Samuel 10 we read that Samuel took a vial of oil and poured it upon his head. And kissed him and said, is it not because the Lord have anointed thee to be captain over his inheritance?
And the spirit of the Lord will come upon thee and thou shall prophesy with them and shall be turned into another man. Into another man. The presenting that follows. And when Samuel had caused all the tribes of Israel to come near, the tribe of Benjamin was taken.
And when he had caused the tribe of Benjamin to come near by their families, the family of Matri was taken and Saul the son of Kish was taken. And when they sought him, he could not be found. He knew this was coming. Therefore the inquired of the Lord further if the man should yet come thither.
And the Lord answered, behold, he had hid himself among the stuff in other translations, the baggage. This does not bode very well. And then we have the finishing of the presenting of this new king. He is tall and very handsome.
And they ran and fetched him, since you almost get the sense of the grab, he's told him. And when he stood among the people, he was higher than any of the people from his shoulders upward. And Samuel said to all the people, see ye him. You can't miss him.
See ye him whom the Lord had chosen, that there is none like him among the people. And all the people shouted and said, God save the king. What are some lessons from these passages? Some Old Testament lessons on leaders.
Well, first of all, when you look at the portion that leads up to this, which I spoke on a month ago, if you remember in chapter seven, they had a clear victory with no king. When they drew together to repent, the Philistines came upon them almost immediately. And then they turned on the Philistines and defeated that evil enemy with no king. Next chapter, fast forward one chapter.
We want a king, we want a king. A clear victory followed by clamoring for a king. It's a very, very human. I believe that the rank and file, or lack of a better phrase, tend to imagine that the right leader is the make-and-break, make-or-break proposition, that this is the cine quanon of success.
And there is that mentality, I think, broadly speaking, even within Christendom, even within ourselves and with our own hearts. And we need to be very, very watchful of that and very cautious about that. That is not the case. Now, it's very interesting that God, through Jacob, then called Israel in chapter 49 of Genesis.
Israel prophesied that Judah would produce a king. So in fact, a king is coming through the tribe of Judah. And through that line, the line of David, would come the king, capital T, capital K, that's the Lord Jesus Christ, that's the line. Shiloh, in that prediction in Genesis 49, means he who is it is.
That's scepter, that's a reference, that's used in Hebrews 1, 8 of the Savior. So you might say, well, you almost have a contradiction here between the reaction with Samuel of God to the demand. Well, how do we make sense of that? Well, I think we can make very good sense of that.
And we can make very good sense of that in a way that applies to our own individual lives and how we live our Christian lives. What do you have in 1 Samuel 8 and the preceding history? You have a people making a demand based on wrong motives, wrong timing, and a wrong attitude. What?
Yes, three problems with this request. Wrong motive, wrong timing, and wrong attitude. How would you characterize someone who has those three problems, bad motives, bad timing, and bad attitude? I'd say that is as ungodly as it gets.
It is a very ungodly state to be in. If our motives are timing in our attitude are all wrong, that's ungodliness. It constitutes, in the moment one might say, ungodly rejection of God's plan. God had other plans.
And when we have wrong motive, wrong timing, wrong attitude, that is ends up as it is stated here in 1 Samuel 8. Rejection of God at that time. That wasn't God's plan. Not to mention the fact that the attitude and the timing and the motives were all wrong.
Timing is very important in God's plan. God is respecting and honoring God's timing in our lives is extremely important. And these two passages, Genesis 49, and for Samuel 8, you bring those two things together. That seems to be the message.
That is the message that I would draw from that. What about in the New Testament we think about the leadership of a local assembly, of a congregation of Christians? Well, we would expect it to be fundamentally different. We would not expect someone to be wearing a gold crown and sitting on a throne or anything of that kind.
It is fundamentally different. And when we think about dispensational theology, these earthly children of God were living under the law. How different is the law from grace? Well, grace in the law are just about as different as two things can possibly be.
Living under grace and living by the law for the law is a very different way to live. So when we come to the New Testament and we know that we live by grace, we can also expect that the nature of leadership is also quite different. I always like to say that New Testament leadership has grown organically. It's grown organically.
When men are raised up out of the congregation and tapped on the shoulder, they do not come out of nowhere. They have been watched for some time. They are as much part of the congregation as anyone else and more so. I like to say that they are organically grown and identified.
And we have short passages in the Scriptures describing the kinds of things that one might look for. And things plural and leaders plural. The New Testament church is plurality of leadership in nature in the New Testament. Check also Act 16 and 20 as to how those new churches were started.
They were started with a plurality of leadership. But more importantly, I want to say that your New Testament devotes far more material to your walk, your walk, than to your leader's walk. Should that surprise you? I don't think it should surprise you.
Well, as I had alluded to before, I would say that if the rank and file, if the average person and the average congregation is not a disciple, is not following the Lord. And that that is broadly true. That the congregation has gone astray. What would you say about the possibility that that can be changed quickly with a single man?
That is not the picture we get, not at all. I would say that the leadership enjoys the discipleship of the congregation as much as the congregation benefits from the leadership. We should not consider ourselves to be divorced in some sense, or having an arms-length relationship with each other. We do not.
The necessity of the rank and file to be individually following Christ is a cine quanon necessity, without which not. You are not going to have a successful New Testament church if its individual participants are not participating and are not disciples of the Lord. I read to you a section there from Deuteronomy chapter 30 in which Moses emphasized that the word is not far from you. You can access the word.
Then I was thinking about the New Testament position. Look at this. James 1 21, wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. The engrafted word.
I trust that you as a child of God know something about that, that you do not have an arms-length relationship with the word of God, that you know what it means to have the word of God engrafted onto your soul. That's where we should be. That's where the child of God should be. We should be people of whom it can be said that the word of God is engrafted into us and onto us.
You know who that is, ultimately? We think about the word of God, what it is. You know what it is? That is the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He must be engrafted onto you with all the truth and meaning that he brings with him, and as has been recorded in Holy Scripture. Some common threads that span thinking about the dispensation of the law, dispensation of grace that we now live in. Well, as I have been saying, the rank of file needs to follow Christ individually.
They did need to, and we need to. We both need to. Then and now. I think about the end of the book of John, the Gospel of John, and we know that Peter was told by the Lord multiple times, three times, feed my sheep.
Feed my sheep. Well, I think any biological entity does well if it's fed and not so well if it's not fed, right? That should be self-evident. But let me make a, as many of you know, I teach for a living, and I've taken a lot of courses myself in my life.
What would you say to a, to a person who wants to engage in a course of study? And in fact, I have two such people taking a course right now. You know what they're called? They're auditing the course.
They're auditing the course. What does that mean? That mean they paid their money and they get a little audit symbol on their transcript. And you know, I don't know what they look like because they haven't attended a single lecture as far as I can tell.
They haven't submitted a single assignment. They haven't done a lick of work. So they might be taking in the odd lecture here and there. I wonder how much they got out of this course by auditing it.
I would say next to nothing. It is good if the teaching in an assembly is good. That's good. But in a parallel manner, you need to be engaged yourself if you're going to get anything out of this.
In fact, my sermon may be very second-rate, but that's okay because first Samuel is a first-rate part of the word of God. Go back to it. Think about it. Study it.
Pray about it. Think about how it applies to your own life. It may apply to your own life in ways that I never imagined. And that's the kind of thing that everybody here needs to be doing.
Whether you are present virtually or physically, handful of people for whom I'm very grateful. We all need to be into the word of God ourselves, not just listening to it. You know, there are risks in suddenly laying hands on a man we read in 1 Samuel. It's a pretty sudden thing.
Do you know who was being prepared in the background? In fact, while these events occurred? A young man named David. He was being prepared in the background.
And you know how he was being prepared? In his heart. In his heart. He was being formed by God into a man of courage.
And though he was young, his heart was filled with godly courage. He was an unknown. But God was preparing him. You might say that God was very fair in all of this in responding to this human demand and giving them a king.
He filled Saul with his spirit. He caused Saul to commune with Samuel. Saul received instruction. He received God's spirit.
There's nothing to suggest that Saul was inherently disadvantaged by anyone. In fact, God gave him advantages that other people, other men who may have been finger didn't have. He knew what it was to speak. It said he prophesied like the prophets.
He knew what it was. Sometimes we're actually not in a very fit state with regard to God, but we still have spiritual experiences. But we're still not where we should be. That was Saul.
A man who arrived in response to people's demands, human demands. A man who was himself surprised by being selected. A man who showed no prior heart for anything except his father's donkey business. And who actually showed no interest in serving God's people, if you can call it the job of being king.
There are risks in laying hands on a man suddenly. Wrong arrow here. What's my two slides left? My epilogue here, the coronation.
Isn't it interesting that in chapter 10 verse 26 we read that Saul also went to his house and gave you a valiant men whose hearts had touched men plural, whose hearts God had touched. That's very interesting. In addition, it's almost the most predictable thing with human beings. Like we always like to say, you can never make everybody happy.
And we have a very concerted effort to try to make everybody happy in some sense by giving them the king that they desperately demanded. But we read that as per always with human beings, but certain useless men said, how can this one save us? And they despised him and did not bring him a gift. But Saul kept silent.
There will always be such people. Even with the best king in the world, there will always be such people that you cannot satisfy. Epilogue number two, this is very much a wonderful testimony about the godliness of a godly man, that godly man being the prophet Samuel who had judged these people for decades. What did he say when the people admitted in chapter 12 verse 19, they admitted they came to the place of realizing and admitting that they had sinned in asking for a king.
Isn't that interesting? Did Samuel say, told you so? You bunch of losers. You bunch of hopeless cases.
And you could say that's what they deserve to hear. No, no, no, no. This very godly man who has the well-being of God's children on his heart, he grieves for them like a parrot can grieve for their children. He says, more over as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord and cease to pray for you.
But I will teach you the good in the right way. I'm not going to give up. He wasn't going to give up. And very notably, he said, I will never stop praying for you.
Are you a bunch of sinners who have wrong priorities and wrong thinking? Well, he had known that about them for years. And in large measure, all children of God need their priorities and their thinking to change. We're all like that.
It's good that we can, if we can, admit what's wrong with our attitudes, what's wrong with our priorities, it's very good if we can admit that. But it's also extremely important to pray through them and all the better if the leadership is praying for the congregation as well. And this man, you know, he's faithful, he had been rejected. And that is a sign, you know, of someone who is a very mature believer.
A leader who is not put off by the fact that those in the congregation can disappoint. You can well imagine that the leadership of an assembly, number one, knows a lot of things about what's going on in the assembly, that it's good that the whole assembly doesn't know that. Number one, number two, the leadership of an assembly needs to be able not not to be discouraged by such things, but to pray, to pray, to pray for everyone. Do we see things that people bring upon themselves that are painful and tragic and self-damaged?
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Do we then say, well, you know, that person has kind of written themselves off. Maybe I'll write them off too.
No, no, no, no. Samuel said, no such thing. I'll never stop praying for you. And that is the sign of a mature leader and a mature Christian, in fact.
So with that, I wonder whether we might, after I pray, sing the hymn, a worship, the king, and let's pray. Heavenly Father, we marvel at our Savior, our Lord and Savior, King Jesus. We know that this world will not be set right until He returns, but in the meantime, help us to have first and foremost of all in the throne of the Lord. May the Lord Jesus be there as our true and only King, as our leader, as our judge, as our Savior.
We thank you for Him this morning and pray that we would each one take with us those things which we need to think about. Help us to always return to your word and prayerfully apply it to our hearts. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.