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ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsex preaches from his series in First Samuel, Timely Prophet, Tragic King.

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Let's listen in. Good morning, Recast Church. I'm Don Filsex. I hope that you are glad to have gathered together here at Recast Church with a place to be together as God's people and to pay attention to him this morning.

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That's the point of our gathering. It may sound silly to you or maybe even a bit disingenuous, and the reality is,

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I recognize that, by and large, people are gonna show up, but it still surprises me that people show up here every week.

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Like, it's like, I don't know, every Sunday, I'm like, maybe this is the one where everybody goes, okay, this is it, or whatever.

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But, and here's part of the reason for that. I recognize reality. I'm kind of a, I'm the kind of person who likes to look at things from a true perspective.

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I'm not a very eloquent speaker. Our worship style is intentionally simple.

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I'm not calling Dave simple. But, I mean that we don't do a light show and smoke and all of that stuff, and we don't try to get worked up into a worship frenzy here.

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And what we really seek to do is to not take ourselves too seriously here. And sometimes,

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I recognize that, like other churches out there, do have a little bit more glitz. They've got a little bit more showmanship, a little bit more of eloquence in the way that they do things.

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But the reality is here, I'm confident that what's happened here at Recast here in Matawan has been a work of God, and that's primarily because we don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take

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God seriously. We take his word seriously. And that's been the focus of Recast for years now.

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And that's why I give God all the credit for the reality that Recast Church has just moved past our ninth birthday as a church here in this community.

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It was nine years ago, on the 19th of April, that we had our first services in a basement just on the north side of Matawan.

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How many of you know where the Trestle Creek neighborhood is? It's where we started. We got our start up there in a basement just on Finch Street there.

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And God has been faithful to lead us through all the twists and turns, almost some years of what I would call the wandering years, where we were at a storefront and then moved to two services in that storefront.

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Actually, we had to flip the orientation to get more people in there, and it was kind of a cool process there. Then moved to the schools, and then

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God has blessed us now with this building. And so we see that here we are nine years later, and people still show up to worship

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God here every week, and I rejoice in that. And so now my encouragement to all of us is that in light of a birthday that we all continue on moving forward in what we set out to do from the beginning, that mission hasn't changed, that goal hasn't changed, and that's that we are all to a person growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

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And this morning for our faith, we are going to be looking into the text that God has revealed for our growth.

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I believe that every time that we gather together, we have an opportunity to dig into God's word, that that is for the growing of our faith.

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It is for the growing of the way that we live, and what I mean by that is that we take in God's word, and in believing that it is true, we then go out and live our lives based on what is revealed for us here in the text of scripture.

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And there's one main glaring and obvious principle in this text that we're gonna be looking at this morning.

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It's gonna be obvious to us when we read it, even though it wasn't obvious to the people that were living these events at the time.

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Now how many of you recognize that there's a difference between living through something and then being able to look back at it and seeing clearly what happened?

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Do you know what I'm talking about in that? Like sometimes it's really confusing in the moment, and then later down the road, you're like, man, that should've been an easy decision for me to make.

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I should've taken this road instead of this road, or whatever, and I think that's a reality to human life.

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It's obvious to us from our perspective what they're getting at here in the text, and the point is simply this, that we often want things that are not good for us.

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You notice that in your life? We often want things that are not good for us. You know, for example, even when the cigarette pack comes with a surgeon general's warning very clearly on there, people still smoke.

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Even when we know that texting and driving is dangerous, we assume that we're more attentive drivers than most, and really bad drivers get in accidents due to distracted driving, but I'm not distracted because I can keep one eye on the road and just quick respond to this text here.

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Or maybe we actually know that sexual sin is a dangerous game, but we believe that the risky behavior won't ever catch up with us despite all the warnings.

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I don't know if you've noticed this, but I'm just gonna speak, I'm a pretty direct speaker, but just state it directly, we're foolish, and what

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I mean by that is we are foolish, not them out there, not the people out in the world, not the people who are in charge of the media, not the newscasters, not the politicians.

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We are all, we all have a kernel of foolishness built up in our own hearts that is a reality to what it means to be a fallen human in a fallen world.

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To a person in this room, we have at least at some point in our lives pushed forward to obtain something that we wanted despite the warnings against it.

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Who would just testify to that being true of your life, that there's been a time when you have done that?

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I believe that all of us should raise our hands on that. Maybe you can't think of a specific circumstance or instance, my hunch is that you can.

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I believe that it's that close to us that everyone could even come up with a specific illustration of something that you wanted, that you went for, that all the warning signs were opposed to it, and you probably in the end got what was coming in that, the warnings came to pass.

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So how many of you are glad that we have a God who is faithful to warn his people of the dangers of sin?

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Are you glad for that? Now how about this, how many of you wish you heeded those warnings more?

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Right, keep your hand up for that one. Our God is faithful to warn us of the dangers of sin and the dangers of the things that our heart longs for and the way that our affections can be won over to wrong things.

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And even as the people of God are rejecting him here in our text this morning, he is still faithful to say, are you sure you know what you really want?

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Are you sure that that's what you really want? You wanna reject me as your king? You wanna be just like the nations, he says to Israel?

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You really want an earthly king? Is that what you want? So let's turn our

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Bibles over to 1 Samuel chapter eight. 1 Samuel eight verses 10 through 22, so we're gonna start in verse 10.

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And if you wanna grab the Bible that's in the seat, under the seat in front of you, that's page 132 in that Bible, that's an easy way to find it.

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But we want everybody to have a copy of God's word and to be able to follow along. And if you don't have a Bible at home, you can take that paper copy with you.

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I also recognize that some of you have apps you can navigate over to 1 Samuel eight, 10 through 22.

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I ask you to turn over there, primarily because I want you to see that what I'm reading is coming straight from God's word.

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And also just to be able to follow along, I know my attention is a little bit more focused when I'm able to look at what's being read.

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So, Rick Estes, this is God's word to us. Again, potentially maybe the most powerful thing that you will do this week is just hear from God to either take it in on your own or even just to gather together right now and hear what

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God has to say to us. 1 Samuel eight, 10 through the end of the chapter. So Samuel told all the words of the

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Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, these will be the ways of the king who will reign over you.

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He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots.

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And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots.

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He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants.

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He will take the 10th of your grain and of your vineyard and give it to his officers and to his servants.

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He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys and put them to his work.

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He will take the 10th of your flock and you shall be his slaves. And in that day, you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourself.

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But the Lord, but the Lord will not answer you in that day. But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel and they said, no, but there shall be a king over us that we also may be like the nations and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.

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And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people who repeated them in the ears of the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, obey their voice and make them a king.

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Samuel then said to the men of Israel, go every man to his city. Let's pray.

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Father, I thank you so much for your faithfulness in warning us. It's very easy to get up front of a church here in modern day

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America in 2018 and want to just spell out all the good, all the blessings and how you are just love, love, love, but there are consequences to our actions.

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There is a real condemnation that you are faithful to make clear in your word. And Father, I would be a bad pastor to step up here and not clarify that there is indeed a destination for those who are wicked and reject your son.

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And equally, there is a destination for those who come to faith and trust and humility before the one who sacrificed his life for us.

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And so Father, I pray that you would press on our hearts the reality that there are consequences, but the reality that those consequences are broken for anyone who would come to you by faith in your son, that he has paid the price for us.

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And so Father, I pray that it's from that place of recognizing the gravity and the warning, but the warning that no longer rests on those who are yours, that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ, and that from that place, we would sing songs of praise to you, rejoicing, thankful, that our hearts would be set free, our mouths would be set free to sing your praises with delight and with joy, and our hearts would be set free with the recognition of the forgiveness that's been given to us, that we have forgiveness in Christ, and that that makes all the difference in the world.

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In Jesus' name, amen. You can go ahead and be seated. I do encourage you to get comfortable during the message if at any time you need to get up and use the restrooms, they're in the hallway back there, or there's more coffee or juice, or while supplies last.

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I don't know if there's any more donuts back there or not. It looks like we might have already ate them all, so yum. But yeah, and then

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I ask every week that you just keep your Bibles open, or reopen your Bibles to 1

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Samuel 8, 10 through 22. Again, that's our text for the week, and that really is the structure, a bit of the outline, and we're gonna walk through verse by verse as we always do, and so I'm just gonna take that in and see what

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God has for us from the word, so it's good to have that open. Last week we saw that the elders of Israel came to Samuel to demand that he appoint a king for them.

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So we already knew that that was coming from last week, and as I mentioned last week, this was well within the allowance for the people, according to the

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Old Testament law, to ask. The asking for a king was not in and of itself a sin.

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In the Old Testament law, in Deuteronomy, we looked at that passage last week, God told his people that when they would come into the land he was giving them, you can ask for a king.

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You can ask for a king if you'd like, and it was permission granted in Deuteronomy. But the way that they ask,

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I don't know if you've ever just had, there's something to things that your kids might ask from you that's okay, but have you ever had someone who's under you ask for something in a certain way, or the tone of their voice, or the way that they were asking, or the motives for what they were asking ended up being like, well, hold on a second here.

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At least say please, right? But that's not exactly the issue here, is that they weren't being polite.

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There's other issues that are going on here in the way that they're asking. The people of Israel have not been trusting in God, certainly not in God alone.

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They have taken on for themselves other gods and other idols, and done all kinds of things in the course of the relationship with God from the very beginning, when he was bringing them out of Egypt, and bringing them through the

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Red Sea, and out into the desert places where they were fed by manna, and quail, and all of that stuff.

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But they've gone back and forth with the worship of other gods, even at that start when Moses, I mentioned last week, was up on the mountain, and he was too long up there, and he comes back, and they're worshiping a golden idol, a golden calf that Aaron had made for them.

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So they've had this problem of a dedication and a commitment to the Almighty, despite the clear command by him that they were to have no other gods before him.

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Further, they keep making idols despite the command that they were to have no graven images to worship.

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Those were not the only of the 10 commandments that they broke, but they certainly, at least, God indicts them for having broken those first two already.

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So they told Samuel that they wanted a king, and they said last week, just like all the nations, we wanna be just like everybody else.

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And in verse nine last week, God told Samuel to give them what they wanted, but first, he was to warn the people about the thing that they were asking for.

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Make sure that you know what you're asking for, what you're getting into when you ask God for something. And here is our text.

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That's where we come to in verse 10. Verse nine, he commands Samuel, sure, go ahead and obey them, give them a king, but first, let's warn them.

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Let's make sure that they know what they're in for. And so when we come to verse 10, Samuel's sharing with the people of God what it would mean for them to have a king.

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You want a king just like the nations, here you go. You wanna be like the nations? You wanna have a king like them? Let me show you, let me explain to you verbally in writing what a king is like.

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I'm not sure you realize what you are really signing up for. Now, I wanna start out with an obvious cliche here that helps us in this situation to understand kind of the heart behind the

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Israelites at this time. How many of you can relate to the phrase, the grass is always greener on the other side?

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Has that ever applied in your life where you look at someone else, you look at some other circumstance, you look at someone else's situation, and you go, man, it would be great to be them.

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Wouldn't it be great to live where they live? Wouldn't it be great to do what they do? Wouldn't it be great to, and fill in the blank.

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The people of Israel could observe from the outside all of the nations, and they saw the massive walls that a king was able to muster the forces to build.

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They saw that. They were like, how come all of these nations with kings have great walls? They're awesome. They saw the massive armies that a king could muster.

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They saw from the outside in powerful leaders who could lead their troops into battle, striking fear into the hearts.

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The king has arrived, and then the enemies would quail before this guy in decked out armor and gold -gilded everything, and just like, boom, oh, the king is here, and the other nations would tremble when the king came.

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The Israelites are here saying, that looks greener. That looks better over there.

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I like the way that that looks. They wanted for themselves a mighty man too.

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Give us, God, a mighty man for us. You see, I don't know how you relate to this in your daily life, how much you come up against this, but an invisible

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God wasn't quite as scary in battle. Do you know what I'm saying? To carry your golden images was even better than that.

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At least the nations were like, okay, well, at least they have a God that they're bringing in among them, or they've got a king decked out that's powerful, that's mighty.

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Maybe he's even imbued with the powers of the gods or something like that, and there was that kind of legendary fear of the kings of old and that kind of thing.

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An invisible God, woo, we're gonna march around your city a bunch of times and blow trumpets and all that stuff, and your walls are gonna fall down, and you know how foolish that would look?

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Do you know what, can you relate to that? Can you relate to that? Can you bring that into your life and recognize how sometimes, you ever felt foolish in a conversation?

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You ever felt foolish for bringing up God? You ever felt foolish for, or even made to look foolish for your trust in the

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Almighty? As if, you know, that's just a silly thing. So the people of Israel were fed up with being different.

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They were fed up with standing out. They wanted a king like everybody else, but they did not see the reality.

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They were blinded by their desire, and so they couldn't see the downsides. How many of you have ever sat down and literally put down pros and cons to a decision that you're making?

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How many of you know that you were unbiased when you did that? Do you know what I'm saying?

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You had an outcome that you wanted, and you were able to see either the pros or the cons more.

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Like, I've done that, and I've been like, how come there's only pros on this? Maybe that's because that's what my heart wants to do, right?

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You know, it's like, you're a little biased. It's very hard for you to see the opposite of your own opinion, of what you really want to see accomplished, and that's where Israel is.

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All pros, no cons. I mean, we're gonna have this king, and it's gonna be awesome, and they've got this romanticized notion of the way that the grass is greener on the other side.

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I want to point out how often we, you and I, romanticize the lives of others.

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Oh, this is dangerous work, you guys. This is dangerous to do. From the outside, we think fame.

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Oh, it'd be so awesome to be famous. Wealth, right? That's a big one for us, man. If I could just win the lottery,

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I could just be set the rest of my life, or power and influence over others, or being more beautiful than I am, which is kind of tough for me, but I mean, you gotta bear with that.

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But having more stuff, you know what I'm saying? Like, I mean, just whatever it might be, all of it, we think in our minds, oh, to be like that person, or oh, to have a family like that.

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We look at other families around us, and this is something that maybe we're even more guilty of in a sense of, we have a lot of young families here.

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We have a lot of people who are in those, in the throes of raising children, or some of you are students, and you're like, man, if I could just get grades like that, if it came that easy to me, all kinds of things, but maybe even just to look at the families around, and think, why can't our family be more like that?

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Yeah, David's like, yeah, I'm an example for that one. Like, just, whatever. If we're honest in our hearts, we harbor the same notions that the

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Israelites had in the text, the grass is greener over there. We think it's better, we think that, we know what would be best for us.

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And even when we hear the story about some guy who won the lottery, and was miserable, and suffered, any of you hear those stories?

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Who won the lottery, and then it just, their lives fall apart, and everything goes terrible, and all of a sudden, they have everybody as their best friend, and it just becomes a burden, and a heavy thing.

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Do you guys even know what I'm talking about? Have you heard those stories? We don't believe them, right?

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We don't believe it, and if in all honesty, we would like to give it a shot ourselves, right?

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Like, I think I could do better than that. I mean, my goodness, they're miserable, and they've got all that money. Not possible for this guy.

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I think that that's a heart. I think that where the Israelites are in verse 10 is something that everybody in this room can relate to, to some degree.

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You have, at some point, a desire for something that you want that isn't good for you, and you're not looking at it from the right perspective.

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They have a heart that believes that if they just get what they want, things will go great for them as a nation, and that's where we find them in verse 10.

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So, Samuel's as faithful as a prophet to speak the word of truth to the people.

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That's what a faithful prophet does, is he just comes before the people and says the truth, says what

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God says, and let's look at the order of things in verse 10. Consider the way that this is ordered. Already, in the first nine verses of this chapter, the people had asked for something from Samuel, that was last week, so then he went to the

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Lord to find out from the Lord how to respond. How many of you think that Samuel was capable of responding to the people with his own voice?

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Do you realize that? He had his own opinions, he had his own thoughts, he already said that he was, it says in the text that he was discouraged by this request.

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He already had an opinion and a thought. Matter of fact, I believe if it was up to Samuel, they wouldn't have got a king at all.

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He would have said no, but instead, by being constrained by the spirit and wanting to say what

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God says, he goes to God first and asks him, how should I respond? Now, I recognize that it isn't always clear to us, but this is a form that we should follow.

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This is the way that we should live our lives. How many of you have somebody who comes to you for advice from time to time? Maybe it's somebody, maybe it's a coworker, maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a sister or brother or some relative or maybe it's even your parents or it's your kids or whatever it might be, but you have people who come to you for advice and we ought to be quicker to consult

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God before we give our real wise advice, the wisdom that comes from ourselves, right?

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Sometimes this really doesn't take long if we really know God's word and part of it is knowing

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God's word, but sometimes it can be just a 50 second conversation in your head with the

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Almighty before you just spew out the first thing that came to your mind, but our coworker maybe asks us for advice on their current romantic connection with somebody that's not their spouse.

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It probably doesn't take long to connect that question to the reality that probably all of us have heard a little phrase, thou shalt not commit adultery.

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How many of you knew that that was in the Bible? You already knew that that was there and so that connection might happen, but to make sure that the advice that we give and I fear that often we give superficial advice.

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It might be good advice, but it might be just shy of what God would love for us to say because we don't talk to him first, so we might say something to a coworker like that, like adultery is bad for you.

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Okay, that's, how many of you recognize that that's a little shy of God does not, is not pleased with that?

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Is that a little short, just a little short of that? Not much because we understand the rationale or how about this one?

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Think about the kids. Like that, how many of you think that that might be a pretty gut level response when somebody's asking you about having an affair?

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Do you know what I'm saying? Like, think about the kids. I mean, at least do it for them, but I think that coming down to, back to God on these things is beneficial and helpful and sometimes we're shy of it, right?

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We're scared of it and so we would give human wisdom where God is opening up a great door of opportunity for the gospel to break in, but we're not gonna take that opportunity.

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Instead, we're just gonna give human wisdom. You know what, they're gonna walk away from that. Well, man, they've got wise advice.

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They're a sound person, they're good and it's almost like the gospel of ourselves instead of the gospel of God. But Samuel isn't bringing up his own issues with the king here in the text of the people.

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He doesn't argue with them from his opinion. My feeling is, but instead he goes to the

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Lord and conveys to the people what the Lord says is true about the situation. He says, the Lord has constrained me to speak to you and I'm gonna tell you what

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God says and do we need this more and more in our culture? There's an increasing gap between our cultural attitude and God's truth.

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Have you noticed that gap that's increasing? It's growing and growing and growing. Pop psychology and even a lot that passes off as Christian messaging is merely ungodly, unbiblical human wisdom wrapped up in a veneer of spiritual speaking.

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Throw in a couple of words about God, throw in a couple of little quips here or there and at the end of the day it's just human wisdom parading and masquerading as biblical truth.

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We, recast, need to be Bible people. We need to be people who are in the word and know the word and are saturating in the word, marinating in the word and it needs to be readily accessible to us.

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I'm not saying you have to memorize the whole book but I would actually say better that you've got some verses that you can explain to somebody than you've got them memorized.

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Okay, a lot of people have things memorized that they don't know what it means. They just have it memorized. They get to spit it out. I mean, know what it is first and then certainly memorizing it can be beneficial once you know what it says, what it's intended for.

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But a lot of verses are used out of context just slap it down on somebody and off you go. We need to be

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Bible people. We need to study it. We need to know it and not just as a checkbox in the morning. I'm not giving you an assignment recast.

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I hope that you find that it's a delight and a joy that your life is enriched as you take in the word and as you recognize it as that which fills your soul like a good meal fills your stomach.

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How many of you, it's like, oh man, gotta eat again. Oh man, man, not looking forward to lunch today at all but I have to do it.

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What a waste of time. No, you love getting filled, don't you? There's something that's delight about it and the more that you spend in the word of God, the more it becomes a feast, a banquet set out in front of you.

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But it's not that way at the beginning. Sometimes it's a little bit like health food at the beginning, right?

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And it takes a little bit of work but man, once you get in there and you start seeing connections and man, it's exciting. We need to be

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Bible people. We need to be people who are quick to turn to the revelation of God to know what he says about us.

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This book defines us. It tells us who we are but also it reveals to us who

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God is and how we can be brought back into our right relationship. Us broken, him redeemer, the fixer, the restorer.

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And it's a beautiful thing when those come together. The people thought having a king was gonna be lit.

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By the time I use a word up here, it's already gone, you guys. Okay, it's already gone.

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No kid in this room is gonna use that word again. Pastor used it. Not cool.

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But from verses 11 to 18, God tells the people through Samuel that having a king is going to be, ready for it, unlit.

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I don't think you've heard that one before. I just made that up. Give me credit when you use it. It's unlit.

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The format is all the things that a king is gonna take from you. It's not gonna be cool, you guys.

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It's not gonna be amazing. It's gonna be actually really painful. And let me spell out for you what it means to have a human king.

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You're coming to me and you're saying you want a man, a sinful man to rule over you.

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Let me explain what that looks like, says God. The people were thinking of all the benefits, no drawbacks.

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But kings are takers. Governments are takers.

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First, he takes sons for military service, according to the text. One of the central purposes of a government, any form of government, is to protect the people of its kind.

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At least that's the most godly intention of it, is some level of protection. But who, ask yourself, within any governing body, who does the protecting?

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The people. At the end of the day, under the governance, under the way that the human structures are, they're gonna take some of the people.

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In some countries, it literally is every male of a certain age. The country of Turkey is an example of that.

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I don't know if you realize that. Every single Turkish male that you've met, aside from some medical issue, is served in their military.

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That's just the way it is. It's a conscription government. Two years between the age of 19 and 21, they serve.

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And that's just the way it is. Here, it's obviously a volunteer military, which is very unique, by the way, on the whole scope of the globe, even currently, even across human history.

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But who does the protecting? Who does the king use for the protecting? Well, the people.

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The people, sons and daughters of everyday people are gonna be the ones conscripted to ride in his chariots and sling his spears and use his swords.

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By the way, the list in this text, I wanna start right from the get -go, because we're gonna go through all these things that he's gonna take from the people.

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This is not an illustration of a bad king. Now, let me know that there's a difference between just what a common king would take, an abusive king.

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He's not even here spelling out the potential abuses of the power of a king. He's just saying this is the way that kings roll.

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This is the kind of thing that an average king would do during this ancient era. He takes the sons as military commanders.

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He takes them to work in his fields as agricultural workers. He takes them to work in his factories in the industry of producing the chariots and the weapons and blacksmiths and all of that stuff.

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He's gonna require all of this of you. He's also gonna take your daughters, lest you think your daughters are safe.

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He's gonna take them as cooks and bakers and perfumers. And the text here is crazy tame in light of what we know that kings take.

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They are also known down through history to take daughters as concubines and extra wives for themselves.

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And even David, the greatest king that will serve Israel, took

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Elion's daughter. Now, you don't know who Elion is, but you do know his daughter. Most of you know his daughter's name,

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Bathsheba. Even David took one of the daughters. A king will take the best fields for himself.

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No king, by the way, no king on the planet takes the worst of the crops. Give me the stuff you don't want,

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I'll take that. Said no king ever. He'll take the best vineyards, the best of the olive orchards.

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In verse 15 covers this little thing called taxation. Ever heard of it? The king takes a tenth of the grain and a tenth of the grapes and a tenth of everything to feed his military.

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And he takes the servants from the people. He takes the best workers, not just workers, the best of the workers.

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He'll take the beasts of burden and the animals to work in his fields and the best, the best, the best.

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Take, take, take. He takes a tenth of your flocks that you need to live.

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You're using, that's their food, that's their grocery store. That's where they go to get their milk. They don't run down to Wagner's or Meyers.

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They go to the field to get their food. He's taking from the sustenance of the people to support himself and his own industries and his own plans and his own fame and his own power.

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And then in verse 17 things escalate really quickly. He's taking, he's taking, he's taking. God's warning about the type of king and the way that he's gonna take stuff.

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And then God, it's almost like he blurts out at the end, you're gonna be his slaves. You're gonna be his slaves.

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He's gonna take and take and take and then eventually all you can do is serve this one and everything will be focused on this one and he will be your master and you will be slaves to him.

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And he declares that a day is coming. He says, you're gonna be miserable. Warning, warning, warning.

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God, faithful to warn them. And he declares that a day is coming when you will regret asking for a king and you will cry out for help and God will give the most parental statement possible.

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I told you so, I told you so. And he will not listen to them on that day. What God is saying here by the not listening statement is the same thing that any good mama has ever said.

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If you eat all that candy, you're gonna get a stomach ache and when you do, don't come, don't come running.

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How did you guys know that that's what that said? Your mom said the same thing to you? Are you serious? Everybody knows that, right?

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You expected that. Don't come running to me when I've warned you,

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I've warned you, I've warned you. How many times have I warned you? And you decide to go off on your own. Don't come running to me, says the

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Almighty. This crying out, by the way, is literally fulfilled. It's literally fulfilled in scripture.

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We see that the breaking point of Israel, it's not the first king, it's not the second king, but it's the third king,

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Solomon, that breaks the back of Israel. He is the one who finally crushes the soul out of Israel as a nation.

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Solomon put the nation of Israel to heavy labor, building the temple, it took seven years, by the way, huge undertaking for them to, he had to really conscript a lot of people to get that thing built in seven years.

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Then he spends, are you ready for it, seven years building God's house, 14 years building his own.

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See a little disparity there? 14 years for his palace, seven years for the house of the Lord. And the people worked and worked and worked, and when he dies, the people rise up before his son, who is going to follow in his footsteps,

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Rehoboam is gonna be the next king, and he pleads, the people plead for Rehoboam, please go easier on us than your dad.

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Please have mercy, have mercy on us, you've worked us to a nub, and go light on us.

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Rehoboam, of course, wise as he was, consults his young friends beside him, doesn't consult, he's got older guys over him that he could have consulted, instead he just goes to his buddies, and his buddies say, let him have it.

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And so he replies, he says, my little finger is thicker than my father's thigh. You talk about weight, you talk about heaviness, you talk about what burden

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I'm gonna place on your shoulders, my little finger is thicker than my father's thigh. My father disciplined you, he says, with whips, to get you in shape to work in my fields and to do my work for me,

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I'm gonna discipline you with scorpions. The nation of Israel was torn in two at that time, and the people were completely beside themselves, not knowing what to do, disappointed that they had appointed a king.

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God warns us, and that which he warns will come to pass. When God issues a warning, it will end that way.

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Sin, sin recast, is promised, it's promised that sin leads to death, the destruction of relationships, the death of good things in our lives, good things in our hearts, and even ultimately it leads to physical death, we know that, that the reason that people die, even today, is because of that original sin, but also it leads to spiritual death if it's not dealt with and forgiven.

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People wish there's coming a day when they will wish that they had never asked for a king. God's warning in this text are simple, practical, straightforward, and true.

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The topic that God is warning about here in our text is interestingly about government, but regardless of the subject, the application to our lives is a more basic observation for where we live, that God is faithful to warn us of the consequences of our decisions even before we go down that road.

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So just a quick word about the human government that's being described here in our text, I don't wanna belabor that or get too far off into the weeds on government, but it is the actual thing that he's using as an illustration to talk to us in our hearts now.

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We live, I don't know, how many of you notice that we live in a bit of a divided nation? Anybody, yeah, a little bit of nervous laughter on that.

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We live in a very divided nation. Our media, by the way, thrives off of division. They make more money by trying to keep us insulting one another and misunderstanding each other.

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Did you know that they really don't benefit when we really get it? When we really come together and talk and work with people that are not like us and we get along with that, that doesn't put money in their pockets.

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There's not a lot of money in good news. Did you know that? There's plenty of money in bad news, the weird, the strange, the bizarre, the out there extremes that cause fear in our hearts that make everything that's abnormal seem normal and we go, what is this nation we're living in today?

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The reality is that whether it's Israel's monarchy that we're seeing coming into existence here in First Samuel, or it's our 242 -year -old democratic republic, human government is never and cannot ever be perfect.

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Sinners, governing sinners is a recipe for sin.

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Our leaders are sinners, and guess what our leaders lead? Sinners, just like us.

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But don't worry, don't worry. Is that a downer? Does that seem a little bit discouraging?

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I'm up here saying it's never gonna be perfect, but that's not exactly true. God won't leave us in that discouragement and the discouragement of that statement for too long.

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The sermon is not gonna end with discouragement and futility of human sinful governance because human history will not end there.

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Human history does not end with the futility and the sinfulness of human government, and we're gonna get there.

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We've looked briefly at the warning that God was faithful to give to his people, but now we get to see their response in verses 19 and 20, and it is not pretty.

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It's not pretty the way that they respond. The people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. They heard the words but couldn't find it in their hearts to let it dissuade them from the course of action.

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How many of you have ever just had your mind made up? You had your mind made up before you ever sought advice? I think all of us have been there.

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We've done that to our detriment often, often foolishness, but we already know what we're gonna do, and why did you even ask?

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I think my wife's asked me something like that in the last week. I don't know, why did you even ask? You were gonna do this anyways. Nobody else does that, right?

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That's just us, that's just the way we work. But yeah, we do that, right?

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That's the reality in our hearts. They wanted a king just like the nations, and they're gonna get a king for themselves just like the nations, and they shouted an emphatic no, exclamation point.

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No, but we will have a king over us. They say, we've heard your warning,

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Samuel. Now zip it. So what? They strongly and brashly rejected

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God's caution to them. I can think of many reasons why sinful people might reject godly warnings.

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Maybe they thought they were smarter and better than all those other nations. We'll get it figured out, and those other nations were dumb and were smart.

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Maybe they thought that they had figured out the pros and cons, and they said, yeah, okay, you've given some cons, but the pros still outweigh it, so we're still gonna go that way.

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Maybe they had a reason in their mind that it certainly can't be that bad. Maybe they really, in all honesty, in their heart, didn't believe that God had their best interest in mind even in warning them.

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He was deceiving them, he was tricking them. Of course it's gonna be fine for them to have a human king. Look, it works out for everybody else just fine.

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Does it sound familiar when people refuse to heed warnings? Does that sound familiar? Let's be honest about human nature.

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We learn best by experiencing things for ourselves. That always sounds better when you're a child, but it sounds harder when you're a parent.

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Do you know what I'm saying by that? When you're a parent, you want your kids to learn how? By your words.

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How many of you love it when your kids learn by experiencing pain and difficulty? You're like, yes, learn, learn, learn.

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No, we want to give them an easy road, right? How many of you would say that those of you that have raised kids or are raising kids, you want it to go easy for them?

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So you warn them and you warn them and you warn them, but the reality is, well, keep warning. I'm not saying don't warn them, but I'm also saying, man, don't be surprised when they act just like you did when you were their age.

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What do these old people know? What do they know? I'm different than them. I'm better than them.

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My generation is better than them, and we're not gonna do that. We're not gonna mess things up. So there's a lot of reasons why people will reject it, but part of it is that we have to experience things for ourselves.

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We rarely listen to someone older and heed their warnings. We always think they're exaggerating the outcomes, right?

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Isn't that part of it? There's an assumption that others are exaggerating the potential outcomes, and those, yeah, sure there's risks involved, but those won't hit me.

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What one generation dealt with as the logical outcomes, for example, as the extremes of Nazism or Communism, the next generation begins to embrace as possible solutions to the problem.

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You know, populism could never turn dangerous, could it? Or how about taking from the rich and giving to the poor?

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That could never turn dangerous, right? We rarely learn from what we're told, but I think we sometimes learn by experience.

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So the people in this text refused Samuel's voice.

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They refused his voice, which we're already told was indeed the voice of Samuel, but the word of God.

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Samuel's voice, but God's word warning them. And here in verse 20, we see three main reasons why they are shunning godly caution.

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They wanna be like everyone else, which we talked about at length last week, and go back and listen to the message from last week if you weren't here, and hear a deeper explanation about what it means to be like a chameleon who wants to just fit in with the culture around you.

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They wanted to be like the other nations, but secondly, here they give two more other reasons. They wanted a king to provide judgment within their nation.

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They weren't satisfied or pleased with the way that the judgment system was working, and they wanted internal stability, and they thought they could provide better internal stability than the

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Almighty could, so they're gonna do it themselves. And lastly, they want a king to protect them and fight their battles for them.

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They're tired of trusting on the invisible God to pull through for them at the last minute, and they wanna plan ahead and just make preparations for battle.

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Their rationale for rejecting God could be summarized, that they wanna be like everybody else.

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They want a man to bring stability internally to their nation, and they want visible protection from outside forces.

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And those don't sound like bad things for a nation to desire. But Israel failed to see that things would have gone much better for them had they remained faithful to God instead of rejecting

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Him and turning to idols consistently. They think God has failed them, when in fact they have been rejecting

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Him all along. What could Israel have been if they could have honored

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God above all? We won't get that answer on this earth, but we will get an answer on the new earth.

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When humanity is finally set free from sin by our king, to pursue worship with delight and joy and the creative passions that He has instilled in us, we're gonna get a chance to see what it looks like when everything runs right.

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In verses 21 and 22, Samuel goes back to God with the resolve of the people. Of course, he didn't need Samuel to whisper in his ear, but it just kind of, there's a bit of a dramatic effect.

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So Samuel going back to God and saying, here is what your people are saying. And God tells

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Samuel again, obey their voice and make for them a king. And our text closes on Samuel dismissing everyone to their own city while he figures out and interacts with God about finding out how to go about getting a king for the people.

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And as I considered how to apply this text to our lives, the main point was just so glaring that I really thought

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I couldn't branch out into a lot of other applications. Maybe God, maybe His spirit has spoken to you something this week about your decision making or your counsel to others or different things, but there is this real main point and it is simply this heed

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God's warnings. Heed God's warnings. He tells you that lust is destructive, believe

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Him. He says that lying will catch up with you, believe

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Him. He says that you need a Savior, believe Him.

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He says that there is real condemnation coming for all who refuse

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His Son, believe Him. He says that sin will take more from you than it can ever give, believe

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Him. The people of God were stubborn in our text and they acted as if they knew better than the

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Almighty Himself. They forged ahead anyway with resolve to accept the outcomes as bad as they might be.

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God's warning is right there, clearly communicated and they say yes and that's the direction we're heading.

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Well, we'll have that. So where is there any hope in this? If we're honest, we can see ourselves in this text, right?

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Do you see yourself in here? Do you see your own heart reflected back? Often, scripture is just a mirror that shows us an image of ourselves and do you see yourself in the people of Israel?

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Do you see yourself in the foolishness of what they do here in thinking that the grass is greener over there?

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If we could just have that, then everything will be better despite the warnings. When we think we can, when we think about how slow we are to learn and how hard it can be to obey, we can get discouraged, right?

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And that's why we need to end this message with the coming of the true King. We need to talk about the true

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King, the right King, the righteous King. In our text, God warns about fallen human rulers.

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He says, fallen human rulers, fallen human governments, they will take and take and take, but your hope is not in political governance.

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I hear a lot of Christians out there who are just on this political bandwagon. Man, Facebook is just rife with Christians just honestly saying foolish things.

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As if our hope is placed in America. Is that what your hope is?

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Lift your eyes to something bigger, Recast. There's such a greater, more awesome hope that is available, our true

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King is coming. In our text, God warns about fallen human rulers. They will take and take, but contrast that with Jesus, the giving

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King. Contrast the giving King with Samuel's description of a human

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King who is the taking King. The yoke of a human King is a very heavy burden indeed.

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You agree with me from what the text declares is true of that? It is a heavy burden. But the yoke of Jesus is light.

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And he will one day take the government of the new earth on his shoulders.

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He will take the governance upon himself of humanity. The eternal governance of humanity, where things are heading in eternity is not democracy.

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It's not socialism, but it will be a divine monarchy.

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And I would like to call it a benevolent divine monarchy because the monarch is gracious.

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And he loves to bless his people. It is not like any kingdom this world has ever known because we have never known a sinless, perfect human

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King. But in Jesus Christ, we have exactly what humanity needs for the removal of fear, the removal of sin, the abolition of all injustices will be wrapped up in him.

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A day is coming when King Jesus will reign supreme. And that recast is what

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I'm living for. That is what I'm longing for. And that's what

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I'm loving for. It motivates the way that I live, the way that I hope, the way that I understand the past, the way that I understand the present, and the way that I long for the future.

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The warning in this text about a human ruler ought to make us think of the King who came to die for us, a

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King who came to give. As we come to communion this morning, let's take a moment to reflect on the

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King who gave his life for his people. And take a moment as you consider the taking, the taking, the taking in this text.

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Consider how unique this really is in light of the description of human Kings that our King came and sacrificed himself for us, that a

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King would lay down his life for his people. And that's something the world outside cannot comprehend.

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And it shows God's great love for his people. So if you've placed your faith and trust in Jesus, then come to one of the tables in the back during this next song to remember the sacrifice of the

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King of Kings for you. But if you've not yet asked Jesus to save you, you don't recognize him as your

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King, then please sit back, take in this song, listen in, and ask yourself this simple question, who am

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I serving? Who is your King? There's only one

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King who makes good on his promises. There's only one King who gives more than he takes. There's only one

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King who is worthy of your allegiance. And his name is Jesus, and he died for you.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for giving us these glimpses of warning into the way that our hearts are broken and the way that our systems are broken and the way that at the end of the day, what we want for ourselves is often not what is best.

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And I thank you for the hope that we have ultimately as we talk about the Kings over Israel and we talk about the way that they're sinful and they're not perfect and they're not able to bring about your justice and your righteousness even in their lives and even as much as they put forth effort to do so, they couldn't accomplish it, but there is one who will.

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There is one who is made a way, and his name is Jesus Christ. And Father, we remember him and his sacrifice for us as we come to these tables.

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We take the cup to remember his blood that was shed for us and the little cracker just to remember his body that was broken for us.

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Father, I thank you for salvation in him and the hope that we have of a future kingdom that will be beyond our comprehension, beyond imagining, because he will take care of our biggest enemy, our greatest two enemies of all, sin and death, and they will be abolished and done away with in him.

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And so I pray that you would help us to rejoice and go out from this place with a resolve to honor you above all in Jesus' name.