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listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsex preaches from his series in 1

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Samuel, Timely Prophet, Tragic King. Let's listen in. A big thanks to Dave for leading us in worship.

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Hopefully you were able to come before the throne of God and just see him high and exalted as he truly is.

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I encourage you to get comfortable over the next half an hour, 45 minutes or so, and there's more coffee or juice or donuts.

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I know we just took a break, but if you need more, don't hesitate to get up and head back there. And I'd also encourage you to keep your

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Bibles open to 1 Samuel 15. I know we read that in its entirety already, but to have it open and be able to see when

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I'm referencing it that the things that I'm saying are coming from God's Word, and that really is our outline for the discussion this morning.

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I want to start off by just identifying something that I think all of us know, but I'd like to see a show of hands of how many of you agree with the statement, listening is hard work.

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Do you agree with that? Most of us, especially those of you who are married. I noticed your hands went up right away.

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So, especially the guys. Listening is hard work. Very few of us are expert listeners, but listening is the vital gateway of all communication.

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You see, listening is the skill of taking in content from a source outside of ourselves, and primarily it's auditory, it's listening.

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But also I would suggest to you that listening, a component of reading a text is listening as well, that you have to heed it, you have to pay attention to it, you have to be mindful of it as you're going through it.

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And listening in this text, as we're going to see that Samuel is going to tell Saul to listen, to pay attention, that word is a little bit different in the

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Hebrew language. It actually has with it the idea of obedience wrapped up in it. It's not just listening, like letting the sound waves bounce off of your eardrums.

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How many of you know that that's never what you're looking for when you communicate anyways? You're never looking for somebody to merely listen to you, you're looking for your words to have an impact on someone, right?

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That's why we speak. And so that is what we're talking about when you see the sermon title here, listen, that is the focus of where we're going.

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But let's set some stage. And so we begin in our text at some point after Saul and Jonathan, back in chapter 14 from last week, they've pushed back the

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Philistines, and now they're in a period of some semblance of peace. They didn't have complete destruction of the

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Philistines, but the Philistines went back to the coastline, to their cities and their walled territory to lick their wounds and rebuild.

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And so in verse one, Samuel the prophet came to King Saul with specific instructions from the

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Lord, extremely specific instructions from the Lord, extremely specific instructions from the Lord that might make us uncomfortable.

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But the Lord of the hosts of heaven, is the way he identifies it, the Lord of hosts, that just means the commander of all of the armies that are accessible, the commander of all of the angelic armies of heaven, has noted the wickedness of a nomadic people group known as the

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Amalekites. Now he's noticed this for 300 years. The first biblical mention of the

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Amalekites was way back in the book of Exodus, when the people of God were exhausted and tired, they'd come through the

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Red Sea, and they were in Exodus heading towards the promised land. The people were tired and they were weary, and so the

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Amalekites attacked them viciously, even according to Deuteronomy, picking off stragglers who couldn't keep up with the main camp of the

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Israelites. A hostile warring group, opportunistic killers would be the right way, the right perspective on the way that the

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Amalekites had treated the Israelites during this stage of their history. So 300 years before this account that we're reading about here in 1

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Samuel 15, God had forecast the destruction of the Amalekites in Deuteronomy chapter 25, verses 17 through 19.

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I'm not gonna ask you to turn there, you can jot that down, you can read that later. But it's been 300 years of spiraling descent of this people group into sin.

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They are currently a wicked people, not just for what they did in the past, but where they stand as of the writing of first, as of the events of 1

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Samuel 15. So the Lord has exercised 300 years of patience with this people group who are wicked.

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But now God's command to Saul grates on our sensitive ears and makes us wanna run for our safe spaces, right?

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That's the way that we are in America today. And so he tells them to wipe out the Amalekites. And I can just imagine that kind of grates with some of us.

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And I'm not just criticizing you for that, I think there's a reason, there's reasonability when you start looking at the specifics, kill them all, men, women, children, everyone.

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How many of you would just admit that maybe that makes you a little uncomfortable? I think if we're honest, it ought to, there ought to be some discomfort with the way that this is playing out.

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Just consider, though, for just one hot second that the Lord wipes out the whole earth by his own hand in a deluge, in a global flood, and we decorate our nurseries with art based on that and have cutesy little

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Noah's arks on the crib bumpers and decorate those with our, but now when

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God chooses to utilize his people as the instrument of divine judgment, we recoil.

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We don't like the looks of it. And this does indeed require us to have a caveat here for our understanding.

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Before we can move on to the main point of the text, I feel like we have to deal with some of these things, like holy war, what is it?

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I want to point out that Israel, in their history, was never given carte blanche, blank check permission to attack other people and call it holy war.

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That was not permitted. They were not to initiate. Israel was never, ever, ever given the freedom to initiate, of their own will, a holy war against others.

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This is not a war over resources. This is not a war over territory.

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As a matter of fact, God's command for utter destruction of the Amalekites, in this context and other passages and other ites that you see,

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Canaanites and Jebusites and other ites that are in the land of Israel at the time of this history,

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God's command for utter destruction is meant to remove all thoughts that this was a legitimate method for Israel to come ahead in their wealth.

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They were not to take the flocks for themselves. They were not to take the territory for themselves. Instead, at the end of the day, this particular circumstance and situation against the

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Amalekites was God's divine judgment. The Amalekites are to be devoted to destruction as a sign of divine wrath toward wickedness, which goes all the way back to their slaughter of the

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Israelites during the exodus here among this particular people group. Now, I might not be able to satisfy all of your questions about holy war in this one sermon, and so if that doesn't satisfy, if you're still kind of like, that bothers me, and you'd like to talk more about it,

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I would be willing to sit down, and if you want to set up a time, you can go to email office at recastchurch .com,

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and set up a time, and we could sit down, and we could talk about this, and I mean that authentically and honestly, because I recognize that this type of text can be a significant barrier to someone's faith, and I want to try to do the best that I can to help you to overcome that hurdle, if it is indeed that for you, but I want to point out that we have a choice when we encounter a text like this.

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When we come to God's word, we always have a choice presented in front of us, in particular, with something like this.

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We can trust that God got this right, or we can trust in ourselves, and assume that he got it wrong.

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Scripture takes for granted that God dispenses judgment with accuracy and righteousness, and I, for one, am not going to consider myself high enough to put the

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Almighty on trial. I truly believe that he knows much better than I do what the

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Amalekites needed in this situation. You guys agree with me on that? God knows what the

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Amalekites needed and deserved, but all that really is just to set the stage for the central point of the text.

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That's, again, that's a peripheral thing. That's just the content of what Saul was told to do.

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Saul has been commanded to listen to the Lord's command, listen and heed the command to annihilate the

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Amalekites. That's the instruction, and the command was just crazy clear.

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Completely clear. Do not spare them. Do not spare them.

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Any of them, not even their animals, put them all to the sword.

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So Saul musters a huge force. They came to a valley near the encampment of the Amalekites, and there they encounter another group, and just kind of a side note here, they encounter the

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Kenites, who had treated them well during the Exodus, and they warn them, get out of the area. We don't want you to get caught in the crossfire here.

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We don't want you to get caught up in this battle, and so they leave the territory, and to cut to the chase in verses seven and eight, those two verses indicate that Saul defeated the

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Amalekites, but he defeats the Amalekites, but he took their king,

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Agag, as a POW. Probably, quite likely, a trophy, a trophy.

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Look at what Israel has done here. We've conquered this people group, and it was really routine to have a foreign king that was subdued to actually either serve you, or to literally, in some cases, they would sit under the table and eat the scraps off of the table of the sovereign over that territory.

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It was routine. So we don't know if that's exactly the situation. We don't know every intention isn't given to us here of what

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Saul is trying to do, but it's likely that he wants to show his power and his authority over these

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Amalekites, and further in verse nine, we find that his soldiers kept the best of the sheep and the best of the oxen, the fattened calves, and the lambs for themselves.

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It says right in the text, they kept the good stuff, but devoted to destruction that which, carefully think this through, that which they deemed despised and worthless.

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I think this is a good time for us to pause for our first application here in this text. Do you see the clear instructions in verse three?

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Can you put your eyes on that? Do not spare them. None of them. Do you see what the people actually did in verse nine?

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Well, they spared some of them, namely the best, what they thought was the choicest, the best portions of meat.

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Now, you gotta understand that when they go to sacrifice these, as they claim their intention was to sacrifice them to God, who gets to eat the sacrifice?

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Anybody know? That's a barbecue for the people. When you see the sacrifice, when you see sacrifices mentioned in the

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Old Testament, don't think that in every situation, in every circumstance, that it was all put on the altar, poof, burned up to a crisp.

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They would cook it, and they would actually eat it as a festival, routinely and regularly. That's often the situation for the sacrifices.

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And so they kept that which they thought was good. I would suggest to you that the discrepancy, by the way, between verse three and nine, the discrepancy looks a lot like people believing that they know better than God.

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The difference between what God tells us to do and what we actually do is a pride issue at the end of the day, isn't it?

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It's believing that we know better than Him. Surely God said this, but I've got a little wisdom here on the side that I can bring to bear in this.

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Ask yourself this. Who is the judge of what is and isn't worthless in this text? Who should be the judge of what is and isn't worthless?

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They deemed that some of these animals were worth keeping. Who gets to call the shots?

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You see, I would suggest to you that we live in a culture that is increasingly entertained by worthless and despised things.

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I believe that many of us are routinely and regularly entertained by worthless and despised things.

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God says to set no worthless thing before our eyes, so we binge watch filth. God says to speak only what is beneficial for building others up, so we create

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Christian cuss words, so that we have evangelically acceptable words to tear each other down.

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We keep a little of our judgment in play when it comes to our obedience. God says to not look lustfully.

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God says to dress modestly. God says to not exasperate our children. God says do not lie, do not cheat, do not take

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His name in vain. Honor a day of rest, and we seek loopholes, and we take the liberty to be creative in our obedience.

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But, Recast Church, beware. Half obedience is full rebellion.

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And the Old Testament is here, not to make us feel guilty, just to point out what is true, what is true about our hearts.

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It's all of it here for us today, Recast. In Matawan, Michigan, in 2018, we have it all available to us to remind us that God takes sin seriously.

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Does your God take sin seriously? Or is He a pushover? The Bible, the

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God that's revealed in this word, in this Bible, is not a pushover. He takes sin seriously.

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This is all here to remind us that God takes it seriously, and we cannot fix ourselves. We cannot follow

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His law. We cannot abide by His law. We cannot do it on our own. We cannot obey enough.

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We cannot give enough. We cannot sacrifice enough to be pleasing to Him. And so, our hope comes only in as much as there's a solution in this word, only in as much as He has provided a solution for our predicament, because we're all in a predicament without a solution that He provides.

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Our hope comes in heeding His word, in His breaking into our world with the word of truth.

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So beware, recast. If you are indeed in Christ, you are indeed His child, you are

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His son, you are His daughter, you have come to Him by faith and trust in Jesus Christ, then God loves you too much to let you get away with your sin.

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Your sin. I believe this by faith, your sin will find you out. And as uncomfortable as that is, that will prove to be grace for you.

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It will be gracious to you. And in verse 10, the word of the

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Lord arrives. Here, Saul could very well think that he's got away with this.

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The people could very well think that they've got away with this. But the word of the Lord comes to Samuel the prophet.

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How many times is it that God raises up a prophet in our lives to identify our sin? That comes to bring the truth to bear in us?

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Or how many times have you been actually raised up to do that and you haven't spoken? When in reality, that's what you were there to do.

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He raises up Samuel in this context. The word of the Lord comes to him, and it begins, the word of the

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Lord to Samuel begins with a strong word of emotion. God says, I regret.

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I regret, says the Lord God Almighty, I regret that I have made Saul king.

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And in this context, as His opening words to Samuel, we need to realize that this is revealing something to Samuel that we're already privy to.

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In the reading of this text and understanding and probably many of us knowing how the story ends and knowing what happens in Saul's life and knowing that King David is on the way and all of that,

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I hope I'm not spoiling it for many of you, Samuel is seeing some things here for the first time.

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God is done with Saul. Now he, Samuel has seen that coming. God has revealed some semblance of his being done with King Saul.

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But in stark terms, God is by the word regret, including an emotional side of his rejection of Saul and revealing that to Samuel.

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God is both grieved, hear me carefully, God is both grieved and resolute in his rejection of Saul.

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He's grieved by the consequences of sin. He's grieved by the reality of what sin has wrought in Saul's life, what

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Saul's rejection of him means for the whole nation of Israel. There's a huge word that people throw around about this word regret, a way that theologians like to try to explain it away or describe it, and it's not necessarily to explain it away,

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I'm gonna go in and throw this word at you, this is the million dollar word, this is worth your price of admission. Anthropopathism, I'm gonna put that up on the screen.

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Anthropopathism is a word that describes how we might use human emotions to attempt to describe

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God's feelings. Now anytime that you and I are talking about God, did you know that we're using an analogy?

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Every time that you and I are talking about God or using words for God or scripture is using human language for God, we are trying to take that which is infinite, that which is incomprehensible, and bring it down to understanding for that which is finite.

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So we are constantly trying to wrap our minds around something that we will never fully comprehend, and I don't believe that when you meet him face to face you'll not go, oh now

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I get you God. That's why you're gonna have an eternity to get to know him, he is that incomprehensible, he is that awesome and that amazing.

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And all of life and all of history and all material and all the stuff that is here is just an attempt for God the

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Almighty to try to describe himself to us. It's all that this is. That's what your life is, is

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God trying to show himself to you. That's why we're eternal, that's why eternity is gonna go forward forever and ever and ever because it's

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God telling his story and guess what, you can't exhaust that. He will just constantly be telling us more and more about himself, revealing himself through creation and through even a new heaven and a new earth.

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So anthropopathism is this big word that explains that what we're trying to do is we're trying to describe

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God and we're using human emotions. So the reality is, what I'm trying to point out is that he is different from us.

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And therefore whatever we say about God as an analogy it's just an attempt to explain him in human terms.

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So when we say that, for example, God loves, we are saying he has a selfless desire for the good of others without truly grasping all that God's love is.

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How many of you know that every time that you've ever experienced love, every time that somebody has told you that they love you, it isn't quite what

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God means by love? Did you know that? It's not the same. It's a different brand of love but it's kind of by analogy, it's similar.

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You can know something about God based on the words that he uses. Another example would be that God would call himself father.

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Don't raise your hand on this but I would guess that many of you could raise your hand and say I'm glad that God is not like my father.

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Some of you would testify to that but how many of you know that there's an analogy there? There's something that's supposed to connect. There's some semblance of analogy between father and that father.

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Although your earthly father should be seeking to model what it means to be a father after him.

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So we don't really fully grasp and we use these words like regret. So when we say that God regrets, when scripture says and declares to us that God regrets, we need to understand what aspect of human regret does he wish to use and what aspects are not quite the same because we can get really off in the weeds if we think that his regret is synonymous with what we mean by that word.

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You see, later in this chapter, the word regret is gonna be used two more times and in verse 29, it's gonna state the opposite of this and you're gonna go like what?

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I mean, there's some mind -bending things in this text. Verse 29 states that God who is the glory of Israel, I love that title, the glory of Israel, that which is majestic.

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I would say he's the glory of recast church. The best thing about us is

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God. The best thing about us is his son and his sacrifice for us but God who is the glory of Israel does not lie or regret and we just read that he regretted.

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But the text goes on to explain that there's a difference here. For he is not a man that he should have regret.

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So for the same author to say both that God regrets and that he's not a man that he should have regret should force us to think deeply.

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Was the author of 1 Samuel just kind of, did he write part of it in one sitting and then get back to it later?

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Probably got a phone call and got his mind mixed up and then he just forgot what he had already written?

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Was he divided? Was he that inconsistent? What I think the text is getting at is in a sense

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God regrets and in another sense he doesn't regret. He's not willy -nilly like we are in our regret.

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So we need to ask the question, how does his regret differ from ours? And three things that I found in my study this week. First, God's regret differs from our regret in terms of surprise.

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How many of you ever been surprised by an outcome? You did something, you thought it was a foolproof plan, it was just gonna, that didn't come out very smooth.

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Foolproof plan and then it didn't go the way that you thought it was going to. You've had that happen before, right? And then how many of you have ever just regretted something?

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Like you're like, if I could go back and do that different, I would. And it surprised you. You didn't expect it to turn out that way.

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Well, God's never surprised and so he doesn't mean by regret, wow, I didn't see that coming. Wow, I didn't see

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Saul failing me that bad. I mean, I knew he wasn't a great guy but I thought I could work with him.

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And that's not God. That's not the God that the scriptures testify of. And so when you see this like one -off passage where the word regret is applied, you don't wanna build an entire theology of God not knowing the future based on this one passage where every other passage in scripture indicates that God fully has everything in his hands, he's sovereign.

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So the second is it must differ in terms of helplessness. How many of you know that helpless feeling of regret?

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The helplessness of I wish I could change this, I wish I could alter the outcome, I wish

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I could have done something to make this different but now I can't. And that ties into the third difference.

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It must also differ in terms that God surely never says, if I had that to do over again,

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I would certainly do it different. It's not God. It's not what he means by regret.

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You see, the central nugget of regret that we need to retain in this passage is the bad feeling for what has transpired.

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God has that bad feeling. It's different from the way that you and I experience regret, but he has it.

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The core of it remains intact. He doesn't like the way that sin has tainted all of this despite his sovereign will.

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He doesn't like it. But it is indeed the way that it is. I think it's gotta be in some sense like the tears of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus.

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He wasn't surprised by that death of a friend. He wasn't surprised by the pain and anguish of those people that he loved around him,

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Mary and Martha, Lazarus' sisters, and they're weeping and they're crying and he is moved to tears there.

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How can he be moved in his emotions when he knows all of this and is orchestrating all these events so that he can raise

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Lazarus from the dead in just a couple minutes? He feels emotion for the plight of those that he loves.

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And in our text, he's not surprised by the way that Saul's life is gone, but he does feel it.

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He does feel it. And so Saul and the Lord spent the night feeling this regret together.

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God would not change a thing in his sovereign will regarding Saul. He's not capricious, he's not willy -nilly in his decisions, but he is not without emotion in the outcome of sinful human choices.

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And so in verses 12 through 30, we see that, can you imagine being up all night, crying out to the

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Lord the next morning, first thing in the morning, you have a confrontation, one of those tough meetings. Anybody ever done that?

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Like, that's not a good way to prepare for a tough meeting. That's what happens in Saul's and Samuel's life. Samuel spends the entire night weeping and crying out to the

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Lord, first thing in the morning, it says. He got together and went and pursued Saul, has this meeting with him.

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And so in verses 12 through 30, it's that long interaction. In verse 12, we find that Saul had been in Carmel, a town called

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Carmel, sounds delicious, and he set up a monument for himself there. You think about that.

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I mean, scripture includes a lot of irony. He's about to have the kingship torn from his grasp, and what's one of his last actions?

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Set up a monument to myself, because I really like myself, and myself is good, and myself just beat up on the

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Amalekites. So I think we need more. What we need, what this nation needs is more statues of myself.

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So he set up a monument for himself when Samuel the prophet comes to find him and confront him.

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Saul is pretty proud of himself and presented himself to Samuel with a jovial, proud greeting.

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I did it, I obeyed the Lord, and I whipped up on the Amalekites, and I defeated them soundly.

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Samuel's response is a little bit chilling. It made for movie kind of quote here.

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And why are my ears filled with the bleeding of sheep and the lowing of oxen? Where'd you get all these big flocks,

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Saul? If you followed the Lord's rules, you wouldn't, I wouldn't be hearing this with my ears.

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Saul indicts himself with his own words in verse 15, admitting that the people kept the best of the sheep and the oxen in order to sacrifice them to Samuel's God.

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The pronoun your before God throughout this passage demonstrates Saul's heart towards the

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Lord. He says, we kept them so that we could sacrifice them to your God, Samuel. I mean, come on, bro.

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Like, you can't be angry about that. It's your God, and we're ready to make a sacrifice here. You see, Saul's heart has always been, if you're looking at the text, and you're really studying it, and you're digging in, you're gonna see that his heart has always been cold towards Yahweh.

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God has never had his heart. As a matter of fact, the very indication is that God is seeking to replace

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Saul with someone who is after God's heart. That's gonna be David. Someone who, despite the fact that he's broken, despite the fact that he's sinful, is running towards the

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Almighty. Pleading for mercy from him, saying, I'm broken, and I need you to fix me.

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Never from Saul. Samuel is having none of the self -justification from Saul, and commands him, it says really nicely, stop it.

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Stop in the text here in the ESV, but it could just easily be translated, shut up and listen to what the

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Lord has to say. He's direct. He's confrontational.

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And there's no question that in this nightly meeting with the Almighty, spending the night grieving over the loss of Saul and his sinful relationship with the

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Almighty, Samuel and God are done with Saul. Now, how many of you know that what you think about your own sin doesn't matter?

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What you think about it doesn't matter at the end of the day, because what really matters is what God thinks of your sin, right?

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Do you know what I'm talking about? What society tells us is acceptable is not the

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Christian standard. Did you know that? You cannot turn to society, you cannot turn to other sources to tell you you need the word of God.

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That's why we need to listen. That's why this message is entitled Listen. God will tell you, has revealed to you what you need to know.

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We always think that, oh, finding the will of God is who should I marry, when should I quit my job, when should I move on, when should

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I sell my house, when should I, man, you got enough in here to keep you busy for the rest of your life.

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You don't need to worry about those other things. God gives you a lot of freedom in life. Get down to this and dig into this, because this is the standard.

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These are the things that matter to God. He's so much more concerned with your character. He's so much more concerned with your heart than he is with the externals of where you live or how big your house is or what you drive.

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You can't look for the standard outside of you. Like I said, the law of the land is not a sufficient standard.

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It's legal to divorce for no good reason. It's legal to get drunk. It's legal to commit adultery.

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It's legal to engage in homosexuality. It's legal to fill our eyes with pornography. It's legal to gossip.

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It's legal to be a glutton. But where God has spoken and drawn a line, where God has declared his desire for his people, we ought to listen.

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We ought to heed and pay attention. And according to verse 17,

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Saul thought little about his position as the leader of Israel, especially the spiritual component of it.

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He didn't take up his role to lead the people spiritually. He didn't take that serious. But the

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Lord, it says, had appointed him to that task. And the Lord had sent Saul on a mission to devote the

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Amalekites to destruction. And instead, he kept back the king and allowed his troops to keep back the best of the spoils.

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And so, can you imagine some of the self -justifying things that you might say when confronted with your sin? What kind of defensive walls have you built up around your own sinful lifestyle?

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I have obeyed. That's what he says in verse 20. Saul says, I have obeyed, for the most part.

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I mean, you know, the spirit was there and I was victorious in battle. I basically wiped them out.

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Give me some credit here, Samuel. I mean, I did this for the most part. Does that sound familiar?

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But I really, I really basically have been good, God. I mean, I've done more good than bad here.

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Can you give me credit for what I've done? Second thing is in beginning of verse 21.

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It was the soldier's fault. It was this wife that you gave to me. It was the serpent that tempted us in the garden.

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It was, it was, it was, and fill in the blank with who is your favorite go -to scapegoat.

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It was the soldier's fault. They're the ones who took the spoils. Wait a minute, Saul, I thought you were the commander.

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Wait a minute, I thought you were the one in charge. I thought you carried the title king. The third thing, at the end of verse 21, the third thing that he uses is justification.

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We intended, we had good intentions. I mean, we intended to make sacrifices. We did this for God.

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We did it for his sake. I mean, come on, we're gonna sacrifice them anyways. They are gonna die.

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It's just, they're gonna die on the altar. We intended to give it to God, so that should be okay.

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And Samuel picks up on this last one as his main line of argument, and he gives us a gem of an argument in verses 22 through 23, something for us to really chew on and meditate on in this concept of listening to God.

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Listen, please wake up and listen. If you're dozing off right now,

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I'm asking you to listen. This is the core of the talk right here, listening to God.

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Verse 22 tells us the way that God leans, and a lot of our lives depend on our spiritual walk with God and our relationship with God depends on our understanding of the leaning of our

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God. What does he lean toward? He leans toward obedience rather than sacrifice.

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Now, both are aspects of God, service to God in a fallen and sin -cursed world. Don't create a false dichotomy.

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Don't say it's only obedience and never sacrifice. That's the wrong way to look at it. But to obey is better than sacrifice.

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That's the direction of leaning. In other words, a way to think of this is the two main offices in Israel, prophet and priest.

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Priest offers the sacrifices, prophet brings the word. Lean towards the word.

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Lean towards the understanding of God's word. Lean toward listening to the Almighty.

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Lean toward heeding what he has to say first. It isn't obedience or sacrifice.

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It's that he only appreciates a sacrifice that comes through a heart of obedience, a joyful heart that loves him.

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That's the sacrifice that he accepts. But without the word, you cannot get to the acceptable sacrifice.

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Do you see that? Without knowing him and loving him and seeing his love for you and coming through his word, you have no hope of being an acceptable sacrifice to him.

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To make this practical and hopefully more clear about what it means for us, God isn't telling you to sacrifice money.

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He isn't telling you to sacrifice time or to work more in the church or attend more services. And he's not telling you to do that especially if it makes you miserable.

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As a matter of fact, as a pastor, you're gonna hear something that might potentially blow your mind here, but if you're giving without a joyful heart, then stop giving.

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If you're volunteering in the children's ministry without a joyful heart, then stop. You have freedom.

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Cut it out. If you're attending here in misery right now and you're like, golly, this is my penance.

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I gotta sit and listen to Don for an hour every week. Wow, I feel so bad for you.

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I really do. Like, go sleep. I mean, you know, if you get up right now, it's gonna be awkward.

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But I mean, here's what I'm trying to get at.

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I went to a conference and I actually, for the first time ever, I've gone to this conference for I think five times now.

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It's every two years. T4G, 12 ,000 pastors. I didn't like it this year. I felt like there was so much of a focus on the law in doing and doing and doing until the last talk.

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John Piper got up and he spoke. How many of you have heard of John Piper? Okay. You don't have to agree with everything that John Piper says.

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I really like the guy. I think he's got a lot of wisdom and I really appreciate his heart. But he got up and he spoke on and identified the parable of the treasure in a field.

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Matthew 13, 44, a one verse parable. I'll read it to you. It's a beautiful parable that ties in with this idea of what way

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God leans. The kingdom of heaven, says Jesus. Our Lord and Savior says this. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found.

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So he's wandering around in somebody else's field and he finds a treasure there. So he digs a hole and he buries it.

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A man found the treasure and he covered it up. I'm quoting Christ.

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Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

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It doesn't say in his misery he went and sold all that he had and bought that field.

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It says what? In his joy, in his delight, there was no sacrifice that was too much because he had found the treasure that mattered most.

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He had found the thing that mattered. The king, the kingdom of God.

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And no sacrifice was going to defeat his joy. As a matter of fact, he sacrificed joyfully.

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The man is motivated by joy to go sell all that he had. See, the sacrifice was worth it because he had found what really mattered.

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Joy is to be, obedient joy. Delight in our master, delight in our king is to be the motivation for sacrifice.

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If you don't have that obedient joy, then come back to the cross.

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Come back to the cross and recognize how much he has loved you and how much he has sacrificed for you.

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A heart of obedience is a heart of joyful relationship with the almighty God. God desires a heart of joyful obedience and it's more than he wants you to sacrifice.

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But let me say this, if you have a heart of obedience, then I believe that you will sacrifice. I believe it flows that direction.

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If you found that treasure in the field, if you have joyfully sold, then you will be moved.

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When you find that treasure and you really identify it and you see it for what it is and you recognize how much he's loved you and how he sacrificed for you, how he died to pay the price so that you can have an eternity forever with him, then you will want to give up all for him.

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But you see, there's still a heart that outright rejects the command of God and it's defined as a rebellious heart like Saul's.

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According to verse 23, that heart is one that's akin to the sin of divination. A strange phrase, a little bit confusing, but after studying this,

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I believe that Samuel is saying, Saul might as well have gone to a medium or a sorcerer to determine what he should do next.

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If he's gonna just half believe God, he could have just gone anywhere willy -nilly and just asked some stranger, what should

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I do next? Inventing our own standard of obedience rather than following God's clear command is not different than seeking an arbitrary standard at all.

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Further, Samuel identifies that Saul has presumed upon God rather than believed him at his word.

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He's presumed to know better than the Almighty. He made guesswork out of the clear commands of God.

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Sound familiar? Sound like something that our culture might be doing right now? Clear commands of God, presuming that we have the freedom to tweak those instructions according to our own preferences and desires.

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It's the kind of society that we live in. We need to be wary of that entering the church, entering our own hearts.

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And this means that assuming what God wants is a dangerous way to live. It's dangerous to live assuming that you know, assuming

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God's character, assuming his standard rather than reading it.

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Studying it, knowing it. We are not to ever live our lives based on creative obedience or guesswork.

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We are not free to make this up as we go. We need the rock -solid foundation of his word as the basis of our faith.

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Without this, we have no stable footing. We have only presumption that's equivalent to sin and idolatry according to the text.

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Sin because by not taking this as our standard but by becoming creative, we will be moved to think that things that are not acceptable are acceptable.

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And further, it will be idolatry to us because it leads to worshiping a God of our own making, a God who just likes the things that we like and hates the things that we hate.

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But in verse 24, we see the rock -bottom sin of Saul in all of this. He finally confesses to the core of what has motivated his heart.

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And it's a sin that is a common temptation to all human leadership down through the ages. And at the end of verse 24, we see

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Saul's ultimate misunderstanding was about the very nature of God. Were he to know the Almighty, were he to really behold

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God in all of his glory, he would certainly fear the Almighty more than man, but not

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Saul. Saul's eyes had been on his people, wanting them to like him, wanting to please them, wanting to be everything for them.

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And he feared the people more than he feared the Almighty. And I find it terrifying that a man who was used as the hammer of justice against the

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Amalekites here in this text could at the same time fear his people more than he feared God.

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But I think this goes to show the depth of self -deception that our own hearts can produce. Of course, the

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Amalekites deserved annihilation, but not me, says the heart of Saul. And Saul's fear of man shows up further in his false repentance here at the end of the text.

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God is tearing away his kingdom from him. God will not turn from this decision. So Saul begs

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Samuel to, we see the core of what he really wants is for the people to like him, and for the people to say he's great, for the people to honor him, for the people to follow him.

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So Saul begs Samuel to at least help me to save face before the troops and come and endorse my ministry.

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Come and endorse me, he says. Come and endorse me as king. And for some unclear reason, probably out of a love and a heart for the nation of Israel, Samuel obliged.

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And he came with Saul before the people, and Saul made a spectacle of bowing before the Lord in the presence of Samuel. And then here at the end of the text, in verses 32 through 33, we see the macabre conclusion of the holy war against the

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Amalekites, with Samuel, this is just such a macabre and bizarre phrase,

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Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord. With a sword, real event, real mess.

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This is a powerful and macabre picture of the righteous wrath of the Almighty towards sin. Those who oppose the

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Almighty, those who would use their freedom to try to claw out his eyes and choke him in his sleep, those who would completely rebel against his authority and seek the death of their sovereign so that they can rule in his place, those who would say the old fool is finally played into our hands.

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He sent his only son whom he loves. Now we can hit him where it hurts. Those animals who would tear his flesh, that would pull out his beard, that would spit on him, that would mock him, and joyfully watch him suffer, those that would pierce his hands and feet and think that they've finally won their independence from him.

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People like that, or hold on, people like we once were, people like we once were, will face bitter judgment, terrifying judgment.

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Samuel will never see Saul again among the living, which is a little bit of a play on words because he will actually conjure up the soul of Samuel later in life.

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Samuel and the Lord, the conclusion of the text, both mourn over the life and leadership of Saul.

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I'd like to conclude by stating some quick lines of application here as we wrap things up. Listen to these, consider the text, ask the

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Holy Spirit even now in your own hearts to point out the work he wants to accomplish in you through this text.

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The first application, the first thing that I observed is that God is not a man. Says it straight up in the text,

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God is not a man. His ways of judgment, his ways of regret, his ways of righteous wrath are all higher than our ways.

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And so the simple application, we encourage you to let him be your God. Let him be

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God in your life, let him call the shots. Second, beware of the fear of mankind. Saul shipwrecked his kingdom by fearing man more than he feared the

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Lord. The third thing, don't presume that you know what

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God wants. Study his word to see what he wants. This word is the place we turn to know what his will is for our lives.

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All else is freedom. The follower of Christ, all else is freedom. We get hung up on the things that he doesn't want us hung up on, and we skip over the things that he wants us to obey and follow.

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His will is found here. Love God, then do what you want.

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Know what it means to love God from the pages of scripture. Fourth, God has a genuine stark and scary wrath towards sin.

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Did you see that in the text? I'm not making this up. It's in there. That's, by the way, why the cross was so brutal, because of the wrath of the

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Father towards sin. The last thing, the word of God is not merely laws to follow.

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Praise God for that. Anybody glad for that? It's not just laws for us to follow. The word of God that contains the laws to obey, the laws that point out our sinfulness, the laws that point out our inability to pull ourselves up from the bootstraps and obey our way into the kingdom, that very word has a more fundamental lesson for all of us, and it's called the gospel.

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As we come to communion this morning, let's all remember that all this Old Testament era, all that we're studying in 1

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Samuel, all of that, before we get to the book of Matthew in the Bible, is a massive case study in showing us our own inability to remedy our broken condition and rebellion against him.

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He sent his son to take his wrath on himself so that anyone who puts their hope in him may be saved.

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It isn't that God's wrath is never expressed toward the sin of a believer, like God just said, you know what, you love me, you wanna follow me,

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I'm just gonna push that sin off to the side, I'll ignore that, because I'm God, I'll just ignore it.

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No, because he's God and he's holy, he can't. He doesn't ignore it. It was punished.

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It is that his wrath has been expressed toward my sin on his son at the cross.

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He took my sin on himself and suffered the just punishment for the sins that I deserve to pay for, and he took that on himself so that by faith

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I can receive his righteousness and his forgiveness. You see at the end of the text,

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Agag, hacked to pieces for his own sin. Christ, Christ was hacked to pieces before the father, or mine.

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So as you come to the table, remember the extent of his love, how much he has loved us.

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His love that was expressed towards his people, and that's represented by his broken body and his shed blood.

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So if you belong to Jesus, I encourage you to come to the tables, take the cracker and take the juice at your own pace, you can take it back to your seat, you can take it standing up back there.

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If you belong to Christ, welcome to the table where we remember how much we are loved.

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But if you're here and you do not follow Jesus Christ, you're trying to figure this out, you're trying to take this in, you're trying to wrap your mind around it, then

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I would encourage you to please come and talk with me. I'm gonna be at the door out there. But I'd encourage you to just remain in your seat. This is a ceremony of sorts of remembering what

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Christ has done, and by faith, everybody who gets up out of their seat is saying, I believe that this is true and that Christ did this for me.

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If you can't state that, then just remain in your seat, nobody's gonna be paying attention to you, we're gonna be taking communion and singing a song together and Dave's gonna come up and lead us in a song, take that in, but if you've got questions and you wanna know how you can be forgiven, come and see me at the end of this service, let's pray.

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Father, I thank you so much for your grace, I thank you so much for your mercy. I thank you that you sent your son here to live a sinless, perfect life.

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And Father, what a, what humility and what great love that he would take that punishment, that gruesome and terrifying punishment on himself so that we can be declared righteous and set free from the bondage of sin.

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So Father, I pray that from that place, you would launch us out into a week of obedient, joyful obedience and joyful sacrifice to you.

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That we would take in your word and we would listen. We would listen and listen and listen, and for some, that means listening to the reality that they are loved and for some of us, it's listening and realizing we need to love.

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Because we all come at this from a different angle and a different perspective. Some of us have a hard time believing that we could be forgiven.

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Others of us are so arrogant that we think we deserve it. So Father, I pray that you'd meet everybody right where they're at, guide us and direct us into truth.