1 Samuel 13, What Do You Do When You’re Down?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

1 Samuel 13 and the Question of What to Do When You’re Down

1st Samuel chapter 13. We'll be reading the entire chapter. Hear the word of the Lord. Saul was years old when he began to reign and he reigned in two years over Israel. Saul chose 3 ,000 men of Israel.

2 ,000 were with Saul in Mishmash and the hill country of Bethel and a thousand were with Jonathan in Gibeah of Benjamin. The rest of the people he sent home, every man to his tent. Jonathan defeated the garrison of the Philistines that was at Gibeah and the Philistines heard of it and Saul blew the trumpet throughout all the land saying, let the Hebrews hear.

And all Israel heard it and said that Saul had defeated the garrison of the Philistines and also that Israel had become a stench to the Philistines and the people were called out to join Saul at Gilgal.

And the Philistines busted to fight with Israel, 30 ,000 chariots and 6 ,000 horsemen and troops like the sand of the seashore in multitude. They came up and encamped at Mishmash to the east of Beth-Avon.

When the men of Israel saw that they were in trouble, for the people were hard-pressed, the people hid themselves in caves and in holes and in rocks and in tombs and in cisterns and some Hebrews crossed the fords of the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead.

Saul was still at Gilgal and all the people following him trembling. He waited seven days, the time appointed by Samuel, but Samuel did not come to Gilgal and the people were scattering from him. So Saul said bring the burnt offering here to me and the peace offerings and he offered the burnt offering and as soon as he had finished offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came and Saul went out to meet him and to greet him and Samuel said, what have you done?

And Saul said, when I saw that the people were scattering from me and that you did not come within the days appointed and that the Philistines had mustered at Mishmash, I said now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal and I have not sought the favor of the Lord.

So I forced myself and offered the burnt offering and Samuel said to Saul, you have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the Lord your God with which he commanded you. For then the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.

But now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and the Lord has commanded him to be prince over his people because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.

And Samuel arose and went up from Gilgal. The rest of the people went up after Saul to meet the army. They went up from Gilgal to Gibeah of Benjamin. And Saul numbered the people who were present with him, about 600 men, and Saul and Jonathan his son and the people who were present with him stayed in Gibeah of Benjamin.

But the Philistines encamped at Mishmash and the raiders came out of the camp of the Philistines in three companies. One company turned toward Ophrah in the land of Shual, another company turned toward Beth Horon and another company turned toward the border that looks down on the valley of Zeboim toward the wilderness.

Now there was no blacksmith to be found throughout all the land of Israel, for the Philistines said, lest the Hebrews make themselves swords or spears. But every one of the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen his plowshare or his mattock, his axe or his sickle and the charge was two-thirds of a shekel for the plowshares for the mattock and a third of a shekel for sharpening the axes and for setting the goads.

So on the day of the battle there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people with Saul and Jonathan. But Saul and Jonathan, his son, had them and the garrison of the Philistines went out to the paths of Mishmash.

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his Holy Word.

Desperate People and the Temptation to Make God Passive

But what do you do.

When you're down? Maybe you're feeling defeated, desperate, the life is pressing in on you, and you don't know if you can make it anymore. Maybe you want to get away. I know someone among one of us, one of our people, who was desperate, who I first saw, first met in that parking lot right out there, first saw this person through a car window trying to put on a brave face.

But things were going horribly at work and home. Horribly like in, I need to call the police, but I can't and I have no place to go except the street. And maybe there's this one nice person I met that around here I can call that kind of horribly.

What do you do if you're that low? Maybe things are not so dramatic. No need to call the police. Your silent desperation is too boring for that. But you're being crushed by this daily weight of disappointment.

One disappointing thing after another, disappointing relationships after another, and what feels like a defeated life. Your relationships and your family aren't what you wanted or what you expected. More of a burden at this point than a joy.

You wish there was a way out, but all you can see is an endless tunnel of remaining life of non-stop disappointments. Oh sure, you've heard it before. Just wait, but you've been waiting and so far God's not acting and nothing is changing.

What do you do?

Now here is where you assume that I get boring. What do you do? You ask? You know the answer. It's the same old trite lines. Come to God. Wait on the Lord. He'll renew your strength. Maybe if I dress it up, I dress it up with cute stories.

I get loud and then I get soft and a clever turn of phrase or two. An interesting fact you didn't know. And I'm not too long and we end with a nice hymn and it won't be too bad, you hope. But then you go home and the slow crushing defeat starts all over again.

And this, rather than helping, is just part of it. Same old, same old. Another sermon. It makes no difference. Still facing the same problems, same defeats, over and over again. You might think to me right now, okay, I got the introduction, but now let me take it from here.

Let me try. You're defeated. What do you do? Well, you go to God. How do you go to God? Well, anyway, it's easy. It's easy. It's talking. He'll accept you. You calm. He's gracious, right? He'll accept you no matter what.

Oh, I forget we're reformed or evangelical. So sure, you have to go through Jesus, but that's the same thing, isn't it? Since Jesus is God and he will accept us any way we come to him. So then we come to Jesus and he accepts us and it's all over.

Now strike up the hymn and let's get out of here. Is that the way it works? Yeah, that's kind of boring. It makes God entirely passive, very predictable and desperate like us. Is it a coincidence that desperate people make up a desperate God in their imagination?

That he's always there for us, on call, the great therapist in the sky, ready to give us inspiration and tranquility when we're desperate and raging inside. He's not going to reject us no matter what we do, no matter how we come to him, because he has low standards.

I mean, excuse me, he has grace. When it comes to God, we call it grace. Now if it comes to other people, we call it low standards, that it doesn't matter what we do or say, that we'll be accepted. You know, when people do that, we say, well, they have low standards.

We complain about kids who don't behave and we know it's because they've been raised by parents or in schools that let them get away with anything. We have low standards who don't hold them to account and then we tell people that God is just like that.

He doesn't really hold anyone to account, that he doesn't really expect people to come to him in his way as he requires, that in the end he's just going to let everything go. His word, these rules, was really only really just suggestions about coming to him.

He's going to let it all slide. He's not really going to be holy at the judgment and he's not going to reject, you know, maybe he'll reject a few people. He'll reject Hitler, you know, mass murderers, serial killers, he'll reject that kind of people, but not us.

If we get desperate, if we get impatient to do our own thing, it's okay. He'll understand. He'll let it go. So don't worry about it. Of course, if that's the God you believe in, yeah, he is pretty boring.

And why bother learning his ways? Why bother reading his word or sitting through long sermons? Why bother? Why bother learning anything about him? After all, it doesn't really matter in the end, right?

He's not going to hold you to it. He's like the teacher who passes everybody and gives all A's to everybody. Why would you bother studying if that's the case? If you're going to get the A, whether you learn anything or not.

Or he's like the lazy parent who screams, you better get all those video games now or so help me! And ten minutes later the kid is still playing the video games and the parent does nothing. After a while the kid stops listening.

So if God lets you come to him, if he lets you let you by no matter what you do, if he gives his blessings to you, no matter what,.

After a while,.

If that's the case, if that's the way God is, you stop listening to him too. Stop listening to me trying to tell you what he's saying. And so you'll drop out, you'll stay home, you'll sleep late, and you'll think, well, why bother?

It doesn't matter.

But,.

If he's holy, he's a holy God whom we are to fear, to tremble at his word, then suddenly it becomes deadly serious to learn what he says and obey it.

Suddenly,.

Everything changes. And saying, come to God, and knowing how, becomes the most important and the most exciting thing you can hear. How do you come to God? See that here in four parts. First, the provocation.

Second, the retribution. Third, the presumption. And finally, the situation. First, we begin with the formula that every king will be introduced with. Every king from now until the end of second Kings will be introduced just like this in verse 1.

He was so many years old when he began to reign and he reigned so many years. Now the ESV is right to drop out the numbers. It sounds strange when I read it, didn't it? Because the numbers aren't really there.

The ESV is right to drop out the numbers because that's how Hebrew reads. He was, we don't know how many years old when he began to reign. After all, there's reasons for that. Before he became king, there was no king.

Which means there was no court. There were no officials. There's nobody keeping track. So the point is, not the numbers, how old he was, how long he reigned. The point is with this repeated formula that his kingship has indeed begun.

Apparently, the story flows right out of what came before in chapters 11 and 12. The serpent, remember Nahash? The serpent attacked Israel in the east. Saul organized the defense. He proved that he was the anointed by defeating the enemy of the people of God.

And then Samuel leads an official coronation and gives his farewell address in chapter 12. And with that, Saul's reign has begun. Marked with the formula, he was so many years old when he began to reign.

The first thing he does is to recruit a 3 ,000 man standing army, 3 ,000 soldiers. The rest of the men are sent home. Now so far, 3 ,000's not a whole lot, so far he's not the selfish dictator making everyone work or fight for him that Samuel warned that Israel would get, their kings would become.

He takes 2 ,000 men with him up in the hills and the other 4 ,000 are with a new character. We're first introduced to here, Jonathan. Now, we don't find out, if you're reading the Bible for the first time, you wouldn't find out that Jonathan is Saul's son until verse 16.

Jonathan is introduced to us as Saul's trusted lieutenant. He's a hero in his own right, not just the son of the king. So Jonathan takes his thousand troops to Gibeah and there's a garrison of Philistines there.

Far into Israelite territory. At this point, Israel is practically an occupied country by the Philistines, subjugated by the Philistines, without post of soldiers, garrisons, at strategic points, keeping watch over Israel to keep them down.

Now the USA did the same thing in Afghanistan, setting up what they called forward operating bases, and the military loves its acronyms. Forward operating bases, FOB, they would call them FOBs. So bases deep in Taliban enemy territory used for surveillance and to purposely draw in attacks, to be attacked with the assumption that they should be able to quell the attacks.

Here the Philistines have a FOB near Jonathan. Israelites pass by it all the time. You know, they had to, they live right among it. They hated it, they cursed it, but they didn't do anything about it because they were down.

In verse 3, our new hero, Jonathan, wipes one of them out. He defeated the garrison nearby. And the Philistines learned about it, probably when any surviving troops fled back home to the Philistia, and they were determined to teach Israel a lesson and to keep them down, to put them down even further.

What do you do when you're down? There's enemy outposts deep in your life, dug in. Maybe in your family or in your own habits. And you hate them. You know, they don't belong there. They used to pray about them even fast and plead.

Maybe you still do, but you dare not attack them because you just don't think you can win. You know God's promises. You're more than a conqueror. That he's given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing will hurt you.

That you can tear down strongholds, garrisons, FOBs that are against the knowledge of God. Those are God's promises. You know them, but you're exhausted. You're down. And so you keep living with these enemy FOBs in your life.

What you need when you're down is to believe God's promises like Jonathan did. Like you're a naive young believer again and.

Attack.

Some people are down because they don't believe they can ever win. Here, Israel is down because they don't believe they can beat the Philistines. So they don't try. They've gotten used to there being Philistine garrisons all around their country.

People today don't believe that they can get out of debt. So they don't try. They don't believe that they can save for a better life for themselves or for their children. So they don't try. They just give up.

A sociologist called it the culture of poverty. It's just not believing there's gonna be a better tomorrow. And so you just live for today. You just give up. There's not gonna be anything better in the future.

Anything worth working and sacrificing for. And so they live for whatever pleasure they can get today. You know, put it all in the credit card. Not thinking about whether they can pay it off. Now if they're professed Christians, maybe they don't believe they can conquer some sin.

Stop watching porn. Stop immorality. Stop living for money. So they don't try. Or maybe they don't believe it's worth it. That the sacrifice that is necessary, and there's sacrifice necessary, that the sacrifice is worth the reward.

That the value of purity is worth shunning porn and instead filling your mind with the Word of God. That the reward of being a content, generous, blessing to others. That that reward is worth having less money.

Worth not being able to afford yearly trips to Disney World. So you can give more. So they don't try. What do you do when you're down? It takes believing again. Like you've never been disappointed.

Believing.

Like you've just heard God's promises and you have no doubt that they are true. Here it takes a naive young audacious soldier, Jonathan, to decide that since the Lord has promised us this land, this Philistine forward operating base, this FOB, this is intolerable.

They shouldn't be here. This is our land. God gave it to us. They are keeping us down. They have to go. And so Jonathan has the audacity to believe God's promises. And so he attacks the FOB and defeats it.

Now Jonathan is audacious because this is a provocation to the Philistines who are much stronger than they are. Saul, the new king, knows that they are provoked. The Philistines are provoked. They're angry.

They will come back for revenge. They'll come back to try to put them down even lower than they already were. Now at this point Saul, perhaps he could think he could apologize. He could try to make a recompense.

He could grovel. Send them tribute in their language back then.

Instead.

He decides to mobilize. He's going to take his stand. Saul sends the messengers throughout Israel blowing a trumpet announcing, let the Hebrews hear. Now Hebrews is their ethnicity. Unlike these Philistines, the sea people who came down from the islands around Greece, the Aegean, they're Hebrews.

They come from Abraham and, you know, and his ancestors. He's calling for the people to mobilize against these foreign invaders. In verse 4, all of Israel hears that Saul has defeated the Philistines' fob.

You notice it says that they hear, verse 4, that Saul defeated the Philistines' garrison. Actually, we know it was Jonathan who did it. But the king decides, sort of I guess retroactively, to support Jonathan's attack.

And so he gets credit. Now, will the Israelites mobilize? Will they come out to counter the counter-attack? Will they come out against the Philistines, who they know are provoked? After all, it says Israel has become a stench to the Philistines.

The Philistines were provoked. Israel is called out. Let the Hebrews arise. Let them hear. They're called out in mass. Come join Saul, like he called them out earlier. Remember in chapter 11 with the cut up pieces of oxen, cut up the oxen, send them out.

Come on out to mobilize. But that was against the serpent. That was against the Ammonites. This time, it's against the Philistines, who are far stronger. Will Israel be more afraid of the Philistine retribution than they have faith in God?

The Philistine Retribution and Israel’s Fear

Second, the provocation leads to the retribution. The Philistines are out for blood. In verse 5, they mobilized to fight Israel, to teach them a lesson, to keep them down. Some people are afraid of attacking an old enemy, the thing that's kept them down.

Maybe of once more telling the truth to some stronghold against the knowledge of God. After all, the captives in that stronghold will get angry. The temptations might come back stronger than ever. Better to let sleeping dogs or dragons lie.

But here it's too late. Jonathan the young, naive hero took matters into his own hands. So the retribution is coming. Either surrender to it and go back down, deeper down than before, or have the audacity to resist.

The Philistines come with a huge army. Names the number an enormous amount of chariots and cavalry and then it says like the sand of the seashore in multitude. There was more troops than they could count and they camped at Mishmash, which is where Saul had been in verse 2.

Remember that name? Saul was camped at Mishmash. Now the Philistines are there. So Saul's troops at Mishmash, you know, here the Philistines are coming and they just say here have our camp. What does Israel do?

It's a huge Philistine army coming.

They hide.

They flee. They are down. They are defeated, subjugated people, depressed. A culture of acquiescence, of surrender, of losing. In verse 6, they saw that they were in trouble. It says they are hard-pressed.

So some hide in caves. They go find holes and rocks out in the mountains, tombs, you know, lying next to skeletons or dive into cisterns underground. Others of verse 7 flee across the Jordan East. The few that remain with Saul were trembling.

They felt they were less than conquerors. The Philistines retribution has brought the Israelites down even before the battle begins. What do you do when you're down?

You hide.

Some people use their religion to hide rather than confront their problems. It becomes a conspiracy about hiding our problems. The church becomes a place where we can speak kind of ambiguously about faith and grace.

Now if someone is in sin, we're really supposed to ignore it. We're supposed to help them hide it. The church then becomes a sin club and you know the first rule of sin club, right? You don't talk about sin club.

And sure that man who speaks so loudly, so boastfully, but I believe all the word. He's totally subjugated to his wife. Who is the real head of the family, but we can't talk about that. His family's dysfunctionality.

The guy who loves talking about reformed theology. Debating superlapsarianism versus infralapsarianism. How important it is to have right doctrine. Pure doctrine. I love pure doctrine. You know, he hardly gives.

About 1 of his income. While he splurges on himself. But we're not supposed to address that. We're supposed to help these people. Help them hide. Now if we start addressing it, then you know what happens, right?

Then they flee and another church takes them in. What they're not supposed to do without a letter, but that's all followed by the wayside as churches have become sin clubs for hiding your sin. And when they ask for prayer requests, they pray for your sickness and your second cousin's surgery.

That's what churches do when they're down. When they capitulated to the culture of religious hypocrisy. They have given up trying to resist it. What do you do when you're down? What you should do is have faith like Jonathan.

What you shouldn't do is have presumption. Third, presumption. Presumption is assuming that God approves of you and your ways without checking.

Presumption in Worship and the Fear of the Lord

Okay.

Remember Saul started out with 3 ,000 men as his standing army and then Saul calls out the rest of Israel. Blows the trumpet, sends out the message, let the Hebrews hear. Now remember earlier, chapter 11, he had gotten 330 ,000 troops to go against the serpent.

He could do pretty good with that against the Philistines here if they would all come back. That would be a hundred times more than what he started with. He's waiting now for who will come. He's waiting for Samuel to show up to offer the sacrifice beginning in verse 8.

But instead of more men coming, instead of that 330 ,000 men coming back, he's losing those he already has. They're deserting and he's getting impatient for Samuel to show up. Samuel had said wait for me at Gilgal for seven days and Saul waited and then on the seventh day as more and more men were deserting, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

After all, he needs to do it. This is what he's thinking. I gotta do it to show the troops that we have the Lord's blessings to keep up their morale so more don't desert.

Yeah,.

He thinks to himself. Yeah, I know. There's some rule about only priests are supposed to offer these sacrifices but do the burnt offering. But what's the purpose of that? I can do it just as well. What's the big deal about keeping all the little rules about how to worship God?

What matters, isn't it? Is the attitude of the heart and I mean well, I believe in the Lord. I just want to do what needs to be done. What what needs to be done now? What's practically necessary to keep the morale, to boost their morale, keep my troops and hopefully get the Lord to bless us so we can somehow miraculously win this upcoming battle.

After all, we can come to God, he thinks. Anyway, we want. Can't we? Not sure he may kind of have a perfect way of doing it. But won't he accept us as long as we're sincere, as long as we have some kind of faith, as long as we mean well.

The surprising answer here is.

No.

You can't come to God any way you want. And if you really have faith and you really mean well, truly mean to follow the Lord, then you will obey his commands on how to worship him. What people mean when they say, well, I mean well, but don't obey God's Word, is that, you know, they're not really intending on offending God.

They're not really even thinking about what God wants. They don't want to offend him. They just presume that he will cooperate with them. They take for granted that his Word doesn't have to be taken seriously.

Today, churches, they don't practice church discipline. Now, they mean well because they mean for their disobedience to be tolerated by God, for him to multiply them. And maybe they'll grow big and they'll think that that's God's blessing.

So they're meaning well, but it's not. The truth is that the only way you can really mean well, is if you obey him.

Otherwise,.

You're just presuming that you can use him. You can use his Word. You can use his name. Use his worship. Here, his sacrifices to get what you want. Saul sacrificed the burnt offering in verse 9, just presuming it was okay, presuming that he could do that.

But then, just as Saul has finished offering it, says, bold, look at this, in verse 10, Samuel arrives, apparently barely on time. This is like this end of the seventh day, but it's too late for Saul.

Saul goes out to greet Samuel like everything is okay. Samuel asks, what have you done? You probably see the carcass of the sacrifice charred on the altar. What have you done? In verse 11, Saul explains, you know, Samuel, you got to understand my situation.

Now, sure, I know I broke a rule, but there were extenuating circumstances. I have to improvise in the moment. I'm sure God understands why I didn't keep his rules. The men were deserting after all. You didn't come on the day appointed.

It's actually, that's debatable. The Philistines are camping at my base at Mishmash, and I'm afraid they'll attack me anytime now, and we haven't sought the Lord's favor. It's all about seeking the favor of the Lord, in verse 12.

How can that possibly be wrong? How could it be wrong to seek God's favor? Realize that's what Saul is doing. He is seeking God's favor, at least supposedly. So he says, so I force myself. I didn't want to do it, but I force myself and offer the burnt offering.

Because we've got to seek the Lord's favor. I meant well. Seeking the Lord's favor, I'm meaning well, right? And I did what I had to do.

That's.

Presumption. And God says,.

No.

You actually earn God's disapproval by supposedly seeking his approval in a way he disapproves of. A professed Christian lady living with a man without marriage told Mary she didn't want to be living in sin.

She meant well. But she couldn't stand living alone. Surely the Lord understands. Churches think, we're not gonna practice church discipline, no matter the sin. Because some people will be upset, they'll accuse us of being legalistic or a cult, and they'll leave, and so we'll be small, we'll be so small we have to meet in a gym, and nobody wants that.

I'm sure the Lord understands. Of course he does. He understands his presumption, not faith. And he says,.

No.

Here Samuel says to Saul in verse 13, you have done foolishly. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, having no fear of the Lord, no fear that there's any consequences, that if you'll disobey his word, you'll be punished for it, you'll lose for it, there'll be problems because of it, no fear of that, no fear of his judgment.

That then is the beginning of foolishness. The lack of fear of the Lord, the presumption that I can come to God any way that I think best, what feels right to me, what helps me gather the people I want, keep the troops here I want, grow the big church that I want, get the success I want.

What helps me do that, not worrying about what God has said, that lack of fear of God, is the beginning of foolishness. Saul didn't fear what would happen if he disobeyed God. And so he thought he could take it upon himself to worship as he saw fit, like churches today that see that the New Testament says that only men can be elders or pastors in our language, but they find a woman who speaks well, and there are women who speak very well, who are popular and they mean well by disobeying Scripture, they think.

You have done foolishly. Because of your lack of fear of breaking God's commands, you have not kept the command of the Lord your God. Some people think they can judge which commands must be kept, which can be ignored, based on their own, their own situation, what gets them the result they want.

But that's presumption. Assuming that I had the right to stand over God's commands and decide, you know, this one is binding, I'll submit to that one. This one is not important, I'll ignore that one. That my judgment is the final authority.

Instead of submitting to God as your king and saying your will be done, your kingdom come. The judgment on Saul here in verse 14 is that Samuel says, your kingdom shall not continue. Saul will not have a dynasty.

Now, I used to think, I'm reading superficially, that this was the same punishment as in chapter 15, where Saul himself is rejected. But here in chapter 13, I think it's that it's not that Saul is rejected as king yet.

He's still the valid king. God has not withdrawn his blessings on Saul, but only taken away the right to start a dynasty, to have a line of kings coming from him. That Saul's son, like Jonathan, would take over after Saul was gone and so on into perpetuity.

Saul wanted a dynasty, but he presumed to think that he could ignore God's commands for his own purposes. And so his kingdom will end with him. Then the ray of hope, the gospel in this passage of law in verse 14, the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart.

Notice the verb tense there. The Lord has sought. Past tense. It's done already in the past. Already the Lord has sought this man. Of course, he doesn't know it. The man is David. He's almost certainly alive already.

Probably a little younger than Jonathan. Likely out in the fields around Bethlehem watching the flocks. He's staring at the sheep thinking the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He doesn't know that the Lord has already sought him.

The Lord has already seen his heart. He doesn't know that according to Samuel here, the Lord has,.

Past,.

Commanded him to be prince over his people. He's just watching the sheep so far, but already the Lord has commanded him in the past to be the king. The decree has gone out to David even before he's heard it.

You will be leader of my people. God's decrees go out.

For us.

They're not just invitations. The word there, commanded him, it means ordered him. God has ordered David to be king even before David's heard the order. Here, God has ordered David already before he knows it.

God orders us sometimes since the foundation of the world. He orders you. You will be my people. He has ordered you sometime in the past.

Believe.

Maybe we don't hear it until we're older. Maybe we don't hear it until we're down sometime. Looking for a way out. What do you do when you're down? You look up and you hear the order finally issued in eternity past by God.

He orders you.

Believe.

And you do. Samuel tells Saul God has already ordered the man after his own heart to succeed him, not his son. And then Samuel leaves Saul and goes to join Jonathan with what few troops he has left to see about their situation.

The Crushing Situation and the Call to Believe the Word Made Flesh

Fourth, the situation. The situation is dire. Remember, they had begun with 3 ,000 troops before Jonathan's provocation. And now after Saul has called for all Israel to rise up, you have a trumpet blast, the invitation, Hebrews here.

What happened? What's the result? Not 330 ,000. They're down to 600 at the end of verse 15. They're low. Meanwhile, three bands of Philistine raiders are marauding all over Israel. And then they're practically disarmed.

The Philistines don't let them have blacksmiths. And so they don't have any swords or spears. And just to maintain their farming equipment, the Philistines are price gouging. They're taking advantage of them economically as well as militarily.

So Israel is down. They're helpless. They're outnumbered. They're unarmed and backward.

What do you do.

When you're down? When you're helpless? Being taken advantage of? When waiting looks like losing more and you're impatient? Whatever you do, don't be presumptuous. Thinking that no matter what you do, oh God will bless it.

The Lord will understand. He knows my situation. He'll endorse anything I do. Yeah, He understands. He understands that if you ignore His Word, it's because you don't believe. You don't revere. You might tremble at what's coming at you, but not at His Word.

What you should do.

Is revive.

That audacious faith that you had at first. That young faith that believes God's promises. That hopes for something better. Because it knows that you are more than a conqueror, no matter how dire the situation appears now.

What you should do is.

Believe the one God raised up from the line of David, whom He commanded to come.

Believe the Word.

Who became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but by Me. When you're down, come to the Father through the Son. He's the only way.