A King Like All the Nations

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Sermon by Bart Hodgson from 1 Samuel 22.

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I'm going to begin with a quote today. So if you'll listen, who is really running this thing?
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David humiliated himself and showed his weakness. Does that sound like anyone familiar?
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The King of heaven who is robed in glory, who is in the presence of the ancient of days from before time even began, and we have no concept of this, infinity, before time was even a concept.
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That Jesus reigned on high with the ancient of days, and they had a plan for redemption, a plan for covenant with creation that didn't even exist yet.
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And when Jesus executed creation, which is what he did, the father decreed it and Jesus executed it in him, in Christ, all things hold together through the power of his mind, through the power of his thought.
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And that King left that domain and he humbled himself. Now, those are the famous words of Josh Rice from last week as he preached on 1
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Samuel 21. And I want to use that quote to jump off this week, to jump off of... Because he was right there, and as I was listening again to the sermon this week,
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I was like, oh man, if I could just jump off of that right there into chapter 22, that would be amazing.
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So that's what we're going to do today. Now, Josh was referencing Colossians 1, 16 and 17, which says, for by him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him, all things hold together.
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Now, who is that pronoun talking about? Who is it? It's Jesus, yes.
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It is the answer for every church question, Jesus, and it definitely does apply right here.
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Now, I'm using that quote by the infamous Josh Rice to get us thinking about God's sovereignty, to get us thinking about God's omnipotent power, to begin to think about his covenant of redemption and his creativity in all of creation.
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So as we think on that and dwell on that, we're going to look at 1 Samuel 22. Turn there now, and I'm going to read the passage and offer commentary as we go through.
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Verse 1, David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him.
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And everyone who was in distress and everyone who was in debt, everyone who was bitter in soul, these are the dispossessed of Saul's regime, right?
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They're the deplorables, and they're a mixed bag. Not all of them are good.
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And yet, this is exactly what God said would happen when they asked for a king. This king is going to take from you, is going to take from you, going to take from you.
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And here we see people who are bitter in soul, who are in debt because the regime has taken from them.
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And all of these people gathered to David, and he became commander over them. And there was with them about 400 men.
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And that's the picture that we have here this morning that you guys are coloring right here. So I want to see those after the service.
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Verse 3, and David went from there to Mitzpah of Moab. And he said to the king of Moab, please let my father and my mother stay with you till I know what
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God will do for me. So David is beginning to understand here that no one associated with him is safe from Saul, including his parents.
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So verse 4, he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him all the time that David was in the stronghold.
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Now why Moab? Why does David go to Moab? I think it's curious that one of his descendants,
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Ruth, was a Moabite who was grafted into the line of David. So perhaps, perhaps, maybe they still have some distant family that's there.
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I have no idea, that's just speculation, but just wanted to point that out. Verse 5, and then the prophet Gad said to David, do not remain in the stronghold, depart, and go into the land of Judah.
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So David departed, and he went to the forest of Horeb. So here we see the prophet Gad, God is speaking through this prophet.
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And David listens. David listens to the word of the Lord that is coming to him through the prophet of the
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Lord. And this is a true sign of a king of Israel. This is what God desired. He desired that he would have a
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Nagid, a prince who would be under him, who would listen to his commands and do what he says.
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So this is great. David is doing the right thing. So he leaves and departs from the land of Moab and goes back to Israel.
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Verse 6, now Saul heard that David was discovered, and the men who were with him, those deplorables.
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And Saul was sitting in Gibeah under the tamarisk tree on the height with the spear in his hand.
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So this is not good. Remember, every time we see Saul with a spear in his hand, there's going to be some trouble.
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There's going to be some violence that happens. So this is foreboding here. But it's a weird mix of this picture of Saul because it says, "...and
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all his servants were standing about him. And Saul said to his servants who stood with him, Here now, people of Benjamin, will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards?
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Will he make you commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, that all of you have conspired against me?"
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Like he's saying, you've been bribed by David, haven't you?
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You're all conspiring against me. He's paranoid. He says, no one discloses to me my son when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse.
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He's not saying David's name. He will not say David's name. Calls him the son of Jesse. He's saying basically, none of you feel sorry for me.
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Don't you feel bad for me? My own son is like making a covenant. None of you disclose to me that my son has stirred up my servant against you to lie and wait as of this day.
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So we have this picture of a man who is threatening with his spear, and yet he's weak and whiny.
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I mean, this is the picture of toxic masculinity, isn't it? You know, I'm going to be strong, but I'm weak, and I'm going to use my strength to kind of boss you around and threaten.
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This is what Saul is doing. Then answered Doag the Edomite, who stood by the servants of Saul, I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech, the son of Ahitub.
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And he inquired of the Lord for him and gave him provisions and gave him the sword of Goliath the
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Philistine. Now Doag is a false witness here. He is also an opportunist.
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He is looking to profit off of the suffering of others. So he incites
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Saul by telling Saul exactly what he wants to hear. Yeah, David is gathering an army.
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He visited the priest, and he probably inquired of the priest, ask
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God if I'm going to have victory over Saul. And then the priest then, and the word in the
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Hebrew there for provision is not five loaves of bread. It's like you're outfitting an army here.
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He outfitted David and his men and gave him the sword of Goliath the
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Philistine. So he mostly tells the truth here. But Ahimelech does not inquire of the
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Lord for David. That's not one of the things that he does. He does provide him five loaves of the showbread, and he does give him the sword of Goliath.
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Then verse 11, the king sent to summon Ahimelech the priest, the son of Ahitub, and all his father's house, the priests who were at Nob, and all of them came to the king.
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And Saul said, here now, son of Ahitub. And he answered, here, here am I, Lord. And Saul said to him, why have you conspired against me, that you and the son of Jesse, and that you have given him bread and a sword, and you have inquired of him, of God for him, so that he has risen against me to lie in wait as at this day?
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So Saul summons Ahimelech, and he accuses him of conspiring against him with David in David's rebellion.
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Now this is Saul's narrative, right? This is how he is perceiving things in his paranoia.
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Verse 14, then Ahimelech answered the king, and who among all your servants is so faithful as David?
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And who is the king's son -in -law, and captain over your bodyguard, and honored in your house?
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Is today the first time that I have inquired of God for him? No, let not the king impute anything to his servant or to all the house of my father, for your servant has known nothing of all of this, much or little.
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So Ahimelech gives him a logical and reasonable response. In response to that, verse 16, and the king said, you shall surely die,
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Ahimelech, you and all your father's house. So Saul immediately passes judgment without the presence of two or three witnesses, which is outlawed in the law of Moses in Deuteronomy 19.
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He wields arbitrary power, and he displays the cruelty of the kings of the nations surrounding
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Israel, who none of them are accountable to God. They can make whatever judgment they want to make.
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And this is similar to what we get in our country when Romans 13 is ignored, when the government fails to remember that it is a deacon of God, that it is ordained by God, and it's a servant of God.
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And then it operates in wickedness. It operates outside of God's...what
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God desires, outside of His will. Verse 17, and the king said to the guard who was stood about him, turn and kill the priest of the
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Lord, because their hand is also with David. And they knew that he fled and did not disclose it to me.
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But the servants of the king would not put their hand to strike the priest of the Lord. The servants of Saul know that Saul's judgment is unjust.
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They also fear the Lord, I believe. They go, kill priest? Eh, not me, somebody else.
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So the king said to Doeg, you turn and strike the priest. And Doeg the
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Edomite turned and struck down the priest. And he killed on that day 85 persons who wore the linen ephod.
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And Nob, the city of priests, he put to the sword, and listen to the list, both man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey, and sheep he put to the sword.
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Now, I'm going to turn back seven chapters to chapter 15, verse 1, and read this.
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And Samuel said to Saul, the Lord has sent me to anoint you king over His people Israel. Now therefore, listen to the words of the
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Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt.
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Now go strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, listen, but kill both man, woman, child, infant, ox, sheep, camel, and donkey.
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The only difference between these two lists of all the things that were slain were camels.
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They accomplished a slaughter of this whole town in disobedience to God with an unjust judgment.
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And yet, when God asked them to do it, they were unwilling. Remember? He kept the king alive.
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He kept the best of the livestock alive. This is crazy.
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Verse 20, he says, but one of the sons of Amalek, the son of Ahithob, named
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Abiathar, escaped and fled after David. And Abiathar told David that Saul had killed the priest of the
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Lord. And David said to Abiathar, I knew on that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell
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Saul, I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father's house. Now, David's fears are confirmed right here.
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And he knows that it was because of him that Saul killed the priest of Naam.
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David's not saying that it was his fault. I believe he's saying, I'm the reason. I'm the reason.
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It was because of me, Saul killed them because they were associated with me.
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This is why he moved his family to Moab. He says to him, stay with me, do not be afraid, for he who seeks my life seeks your life.
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With me you shall be in safekeeping. Now, there are two things that I want to comment about this passage in 1
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Samuel. The first one's interesting information. The second one's amazing. Okay, first thing, let's do the blasé one first.
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The cave of Adullam is on the border of Philistia, okay? Now David is wise, he chooses this place because it provides protection from Saul, who doesn't want to stir up the angry hornet's nest of the
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Philistines, right? So doing a military campaign to find David on the border is not smart for Saul.
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So it provides David some protection there. It is interesting that in 2
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Samuel 23, David returns to the cave of Adullam, and as king, he fortifies this into a stronghold.
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In fact, at this location, he attacks the Philistines who are surrounding Bethlehem, and many of you remember the story that David is there and offhandedly he says, you know what,
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I grew up in Bethlehem, and man, what I wouldn't give for one drink from the well in the center of town, the center of town that's crawling with Philistines right now.
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That would be so good. And three of his mighty men overhear him say that, and they go, let's do it.
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And so they fight their way in to an army, into an occupied territory. They get to the center of town, they get some water, and they take it, they fight and retreat with the water back to David and give him the water.
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And David, of course, pours out the water because it was not his request. He wasn't asking them to do that, and it came at such a great risk to these men.
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He goes, how can I drink this? So many of you remember that story. That's the cave of Adullam.
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Okay, that's just informational. This one is, this one's crazy.
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Do you realize that in this chapter that we just read, prophecy has been fulfilled?
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So if we go back to 1 Samuel 2, verse 31, God passes judgment on the house of Eli, and he delivers this message to Eli through a man of God.
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And it says, and this is the message, behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father's house so that there will not be an old man in your house.
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Then in distress, you will look with envious eye on all the prosperity that has been bestowed on Israel, and there shall not be an old man in your house forever.
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Don't miss this. He says, the only one of you whom
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I shall not cut off from my altar shall be spared to weep his eyes out and to grieve his heart, and all of the descendants of your house shall die by the sword of men.
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That just happened. Now prophecy is one of those things for me, true prophecy, right?
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When I see it in the Bible, it is fascinating. I'm just like, what? No way.
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That can't have just happened. That was foretold 50 years prior and God accomplished what he said he was going to do.
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Now it also creates in me a disdain for the fake stuff, right?
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Here's a great example, and this occurred to me this week as I was listening to someone else's podcast. They were talking about it.
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Do you remember in April? Remember in April when the eclipse happened? And all of the social media posts about the path of totality and how it went through all of these towns called
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Nineveh and Jonah, and then somehow they start reverse engineering that and going to the
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Bible to go, oh, there's got to be a prophecy in here somewhere that talks about that, right?
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That is so dumb and forgettable, right?
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Some of you haven't even thought about that since May, right? It is gone from our minds, and I believe that's why
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God also disdains this as well because people are saying, thus saith the Lord, right?
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And as they're saying, thus saith the Lord, and it's not the Lord who's speaking, they're saying it's me who's speaking, so I am the
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Lord. It is no wonder that in Deuteronomy, he says if the prophecy doesn't come true, you stone that person, you kill them, and in Jeremiah 29,
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God is not happy with those people who are saying, peace, peace, because he says, I know the plans that I have for you.
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Not these people. Don't listen to them. So once I got out of the tingly feeling of this is like a real prophecy here that's happened, then the truth of it just kind of hit me.
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It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what just happened?
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Wait just a minute. So God was behind this. So God used
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Saul and Doeg. In the height of their wickedness, God uses them to settle a score with the house of Eli, but Saul did this thing,
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Doeg did this thing of their own volition. They did choose this horrible act of the ban, and they used it against an
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Israelite town, and not just an Israelite town, but a town full of priests.
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So how do we wrap our minds around that? Who is responsible for this tragedy?
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Who is responsible for the slaughter? Is it Saul? Is it God? Is it both?
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If God's responsible, does this make him responsible of great evil? Okay, that's a hard question.
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So let's answer that question by allowing me to ask you a bunch of questions, okay?
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So who is responsible for this? Who killed the priest? Who actually killed the priest?
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Doeg? And Saul. Saul ordered it. Was Eli and his sons responsible to God for their sins?
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Yes. Was God righteous in His judgment against Eli and his sons?
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Yes. Was God in control of the whole universe when the priests of Nob were slaughtered?
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Yes. Did God make Saul? Did He make
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Doeg kill the priest? Did God allow?
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Did He permit the slaughter of the priest at Nob? Yes. So is
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God evil? No. God is good, and all of His judgments are righteous and true.
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Here's the last question, which is a mystery. Do even the wicked plans of men end up furthering
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God's perfect will? And the answer to that is, like I said, mysteriously, somehow, yes, they do.
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So our story today in 1 Samuel has us discussing the theological topic of God's sovereignty.
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And when we talk about God's sovereignty, we mean God's rule. We mean His authority over the universe, over everything.
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It is His control. That's it. That's it. That's a scary word for us.
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It is His control over every molecule that exists. If God controls everything, that kind of threatens our own sense of control, and it makes us uncomfortable.
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And hopefully this message this morning will make you a little bit uncomfortable, because one of my points this morning is that we need to get comfortable with the uncomfortable parts of God.
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Because when we do, I believe we can see Him most clearly.
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Here's the problem. The universe that God controls is not a universe that we can opt out of.
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So we can either accept God's sovereignty as a universal reality, and it can actually help inform us how to live in this reality, or we can comfort ourselves with the myth of our own ability to control our world and our future, and in the process of that be forever angry with God when our world spins out of control, which it does.
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When it comes to our Calvinist understanding of the Scriptures, these points really tweak people.
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They really get upset. Especially the concept of unconditional election and limited atonement.
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And this is the theological understanding that God has a role in our salvation, and that role is that He chooses whom
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He will demonstrate His grace through in salvation, untethered from anything on our part, irrespective of anything that we might be or might become or anything that we've done.
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He saves us. He saves humanity out of an act of His divine will alone.
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And He's only chosen some, not all. So this makes most people four -point
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Calvinists, because they choose one of these two as a theological truth that they just really can't wrap their minds around.
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So there's this unpopular fifth point, which is either, like I said, unconditional election or limited atonement, whichever one they choose, that they claim keeps them from being a full
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Calvinist. R .C. Sproul would say that if you are a four -point
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Calvinist, you're really no Calvinist at all. But back to the story of 1
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Samuel. The story in 1 Samuel is not just about God's sovereignty, but it's also about man's responsibility.
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So the question is, are Doeg and Saul responsible for this evil? So if He makes me do something, how can
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He hold me accountable for that? Or, if He's going to do things anyway, because He wills it, why do anything at all?
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I mean, if the election in November is already determined, why vote? They're going to steal it anyway.
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Why vote? And I'll answer that at the end. But let's look at what Paul says as he addresses this in Romans 9, 17 through 21, and he brings up Pharaoh.
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He says, Romans 9, 17 says, For the scripture says to Pharaoh, For this purpose I have raised you up, so that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
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So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
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You will say to me then, Why does he still find fault? For no one can resist his will.
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And Paul says, But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? What will what is molded say to its molder,
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Why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make the same lump, one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?
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So Paul is saying, God can do whatever He wants to do with what He creates. The question is raised then, well, why is man still held accountable for his actions when we can't help but do what
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God decrees? And Paul's response is, Who are you to answer back to God?
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For He can create a person to fulfill His will, and He can judge him for it.
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Okay, that answer is true, but it really fails to satisfy the discomfort with the contradiction.
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How do you reconcile the conflict when you hear the story about Saul and Doehead? Or the other stories in the
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Bible, right? Paul brings up the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. Psalm 22, if you read Psalm 22, this is another one of those prophecies that just makes me tingle, right?
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Because in Psalm 22, he foretells the crucifixion of Jesus, and it says that the people, it talks about the people who are there around the cross, and it says specifically down to what they will say.
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And guess what? They say it exactly like it was prophesied a thousand years before.
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Now how can God hold them accountable for something that He decreed that they were going to do?
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Let me give a little bit of an illustration here, kind of break us out of the text in our theological minds.
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As physics was being developed as a science, scientists began to make all kinds of experiments about all kinds of things.
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And some scientists started to experiment on the properties of light. Many of these experiments proved without a shadow of a doubt that light was a wave, while a different group of scientists pursued a different theory and proved with beyond a shadow of a doubt that light was a particle.
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And these scientists argued, believing that only one theory could be true, and they were wrong, because light is both a wave and a particle.
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This illustrates that we live in a world where truths can seem to be contradictory.
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God has created a world where light is a wave and a particle.
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He has also created a world where He is King, with sovereign control over all of history and all of creation, moving it towards His intended end.
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His sovereign plan is a result of His eternal decrees and His creative power, but God is also at the same time a judge who holds men morally accountable for their thoughts and their actions.
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Now, we in here this morning, hearing about this, it's okay to struggle with reconciling these two incompatible truths, right?
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And this is where we get in trouble, though, is because we struggle with it so much because we can't hold them in balance.
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And one truth usually suffers and is elevated over another.
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Spurgeon offers us this advice. He says, I never reconcile friends, which means,
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Spurgeon is telling us, these two truths are not opposed to each other, and we are to hold them both together in tension, trusting
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God who holds all things together. Now, again, this is difficult to understand, and it's very easy to make it more difficult than it actually is, which many do, okay?
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So instead of holding these two truths together, we opt for other options.
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We can believe that God is not as sovereign as He is. We can believe that He is a weak
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God who is only semi -sovereign. We can also believe in a strong God who determines every thought and action, and it frees us from our responsibility as man.
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Now, then we take these two options and we go, let's construct a functional theology out of both of them in some weird opposite contradiction, right, where these two things exist together, a weak
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God and man completely free from moral responsibility. Oh, yeah, that's great, right?
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We can't...this is crazy, because we can't believe two true things, but man, we can believe a whole bunch of false things and put them together, right?
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We go, wow, that sounds good to me, all right? So what does it actually look like when we do this, when we believe in a weak sovereignty, which
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I think most of us reformed Christians fall into? And you may say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
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I am reformed, right? Don't be pushing on my sovereign...I
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know what sovereign...I know what that word means, right? Don't go pushing on my theological tower.
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That's one of my strengths. Just listen and consider. When we believe in weak sovereignty, it translates into a lack of fear in our lives when it comes to the
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Almighty. Now, we know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but we dismiss that fear by diminishing
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His kingly authority with His love, right? God is loving.
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He wants me to be able to choose for myself. He defers to my will. He abdicates
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His throne for me because He loves me, right? And there we did it again.
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We fell into a reductionist solution by elevating love and diminishing God's sovereignty, diminishing
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His control rather than holding these two attributes of God in balance, right? Let's put this in perspective.
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An atheist says there is no God, and he has no fear of God, right?
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Because we don't fear what doesn't exist. And what doesn't exist can't be sovereign, and it can't control anything either.
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But this is the great error of the atheist because God does exist and God does reign and He holds all men accountable to Him, right?
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Because we know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but we operate with the same understanding as the atheist.
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Here's what we do. We function like God doesn't control anything. We live in a way that strips
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God of His throne and strips Him of His authority, and we operate like we don't have to fear
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God. We live like, man, I can choose God whenever I want to, when
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I'm ready, just not ready yet. Between your ears, we know that the fear of the
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Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but that knowledge is meaningless if it doesn't affect the way that we live.
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Perhaps we're a little bit better than that. Maybe it will give us a little bit of the benefit of the doubt.
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Maybe we believe that there's a God who is sovereign over some stuff, like all the things we can't control, like the weather, perhaps.
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And so we have a little fear of God, but only a little bit, because we have meteorologists and we have umbrellas, right?
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My point is this. We don't fear God as we ought, because we only acknowledge the idea of God's sovereignty.
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That may be you today. That may be you. Am I wrong, though? Am I wrong?
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Because I think if Christians truly believed in God's sovereignty, we would be less fearful as a people.
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Think about that. If you believe that God has the perfect plan and He's executing that in this world right now, what do you have to fear?
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I also believe that we would be more confident in difficult times or in times of suffering, because we go, you know what?
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This is hard. This is hard, but God is with me. God can sustain me.
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We sang that. God can sustain me in this, and He's gonna work this out for my good.
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We would be confident. And we would also, I think we would also, I think Christians would be willing to risk more to build the kingdom of God rather than their own kingdoms, rather than investing in protecting themselves.
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I think that if we believed in sovereignty, that we would choose sin less and we would choose
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God more, because we would fear His judgment. And then last of all, wouldn't we pray more if we believed in God's sovereignty?
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Wouldn't we just be going to Him and just say, God, man, repenting more, seeking
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Him more? What is it that you want, God? Reveal that to us. What are you doing?
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So that we can participate with that. So, when we operate in this freedom from sovereignty, or we operate with a
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God with weak sovereignty, we discover, we suddenly discover this problem. If God is not in control, who's really running this thing?
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Getting back to the Josh Rice quote. And our fear of God, what we do is we exchange that for a fear of humans.
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We exchange it for a fear of our surroundings and the world that we live in. Because as humans operate under self -rule, their sin starts to disturb our new sense of freedom, right?
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For example, armed Venezuelan gangs moving into your neighborhood, okay?
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What do you do with that? If God's not in control, you have that to fear.
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So we pivot, not turning to God though. We try to solve the problem by trusting in an opportunist false witness.
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They always appear at the right time, which gladly assumes the role of God and promises to protect us from our fears and protect our comforts.
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He promises order and salvation. Who am I talking about? I remember in 2020,
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I remember COVID and the vaccines, and I remember all the government oversteps that happened.
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And I remember people in church who would say, I can't wait for us to return back to normal.
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And that's going to happen when we get the vaccine. So salvation, their salvation was in the vaccine.
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They, I can't wait till we get back to normal. If we just continue to social distance, if we continue to close our churches, we'll get back to normal.
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And we would do anything, anything to not, to have our comfort restored, to not be in fear anymore.
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And it's, it's an idol. It's just like Nebuchadnezzar building a 90 foot tall statue of himself made of solid gold.
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And that idol is statism. And as long as we operate in submission to government and to its social norms and its political correctness, we can consider ourselves justified from our sin.
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We're a good people. We're validated from the unrighteousness of trusting in man, of trusting in the state, of turning our backs on God.
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What this is, is the religion of humanism. Man is
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God. But that religion must erase the true King so that it can reign unchallenged.
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We just sang this this morning in Psalm 2, right? What did it say? What we sang this together, we, they in their mortal reign opposed the
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Holy One. And they say, we cast asunder all these chains, our bonds shall be undone.
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God is just a big chain around our neck. And we're going to be free of that.
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But it's not just government that we trust in. We trust in so many things. There's always a snake oil salesman ready to sell you a lie.
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But I focused on statism this morning because the story in 1 Samuel shows us
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Israel's terrible decision to liberate themselves from God, to liberate themselves from His perfect law, the insanity of liberating themselves from His hesed, from His covenantal faithfulness.
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The steadfast love of the Lord. They said to God, they said to His face, we desire to be free of you and your covenants.
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And they got exactly what they asked for. And it's tragic. This tragic story is exactly what they asked for.
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And even in this, God is graciously teaching them. And He's still teaching us today.
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He's teaching us to see the lie of a utopia created through discarding and disregarding
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God in His Word. He's showing us that that is a nightmarish dystopia.
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And yet still, we work really hard to convince ourselves that this is what we really wanted. Right? Notice the verse, or where is the verse in this chapter about the public outcry against Saul's actions?
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Where is the mob justice against Doeg? Where is any repentance of the people for wanting a king like all the nations?
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It's not there. Israel just goes along with the injustice. No one goes to jail.
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It's ignored. It's forgotten. So, I remember someone calling my understanding of God's sovereignty deterministic.
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He said I had a deterministic worldview that reduces us to robots. He also said that I misrepresented
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God, who didn't create a universe that robs us of our freedom and therefore making our choices irrelevant.
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So, this word, this is a big word, determinism, right? Maybe you've heard of it.
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I found this definition of determinism, and it helps us to think of a universe, or think of the universe as a giant machine, right?
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And this machine is just grinding alone, doing exactly what it must inevitably continue to do for all of time.
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It follows a rigid set of rules. And in this definition, man is reduced to all these little cogs that are stuck in the machine.
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That's determinism, right? And as Christians, we believe the rule that spins the whole machine is
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God's rule. Now, part of our recoiling from the scary word of determinism is because the questions that follow it are hard questions.
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And a lot of times we find ourselves afraid and unprepared to answer these questions. The question of moral responsibility.
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If our actions are determined, can we be held morally accountable for them?
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And the answer, and the answer that you need to give is yes, because our actions are wicked and they deserve judgment.
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Your obedience matters. What you do matters because Jesus is a judge, and He is a righteous judge.
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The other question is the question of free will. And people will ask, well, then is the concept of free will an illusion, or can we truly make choices that are not predetermined?
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And I would say it doesn't matter because you act as a free agent.
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Your choices are your choices. Look at the story, Saul and Doeg.
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Were these their choices? Yes, they were. Good or bad, our choices are our choices.
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So these questions miss the point, and they try to sidestep God being a judge.
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They're more like accusations that are used to intimidate us so that we fear embracing God as king, and fear embracing
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God as judge, like the Bible clearly encourages us. If we did, we might actually tremble at His power and at our insignificance.
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Instead, we find a lot of people nuancing these Scriptures, lessening their clarity in an attempt to describe a
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God that's not so uncomfortable. I want you to hear the
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Scriptures speak today clearly. So listen, Ephesians 1, 11. In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.
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He decides things according to the purpose, to His purpose, according to the counsel of His will.
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Or Romans 8, 28. We know this one, right? It's overused, but it's so beautiful.
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And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.
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Proverbs 16, 13. The lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the
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Lord. There's no fate. There's no chance. Every decision is from the
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Lord. Job 42, 2. I know that you can do all things. This is Job speaking to God.
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I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Nobody can disrupt what you're trying to do.
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Nobody is that powerful. Lamentations 3, 37 through 39. Who has spoken and it came to pass unless the
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Lord commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?
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Why should living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?
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Acts 4, 27 through 28. I believe this is Peter talking about what God's sharing the gospel.
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He says, for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you appointed, both
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Herod, Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and other peoples of Israel to do whatever your hand,
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God's hand, had planned and predestined to take place. Even in that,
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God was sovereign. He was in complete control.
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Psalm 115, 2 and 3. Why should the nation say, where is their God? Our God is in the heavens.
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He does whatever He wants. Daniel 4, 35. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and He does according to His will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay
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His hand or say to Him, what have You done? Nobody can do that.
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We're all accountable to Him. Romans 3, 19. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
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The Bible declares God's sovereign rule. It declares His divine plan. It declares
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His eternal decrees and His righteous judgment. So when it comes to sovereignty, I would suggest to you today that, and I'll make this personal,
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I have a great deal of room to grow. I think we all have a great deal of room to grow, even though we claim to be
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Reformed Calvinist Christians, and if we don't grow, we will continue to undermine
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God's omnipotence. We will undermine His power. We must get comfortable with the uncomfortable parts of God so that we can see
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Him with greater clarity. Now here in 1 Samuel 22, we are seeing how God's sovereignty,
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God's covenant with man, the role of the state as the servant of God, the negate of God.
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We see the obedience to God's law, our loyalty to God, and God's covenantal faithfulness all coming together.
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These are the key elements that God wants His people to learn and embrace in their faithful worship of Him alone.
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He wants that for the people in the time of Samuel. He wants that in our time as well.
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We have to understand these key elements. You see, Israel got exactly what they asked for,
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Saul and Doeg killing an Israelite town full of priests. Remember, it all started, and it all starts, with idolatry.
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Their desired statism, worshiping a government system outside of God's rule and His reign is idolatry, a faulty sense of worship.
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And it's crazy because these are God's people who had Moses, they had Joshua, they were delivered from Egypt with amazing acts of God's power.
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They were guided through the wilderness, they were given the promised land, but they loved foreign gods. God provided judges to deliver them from their enemies, but they loved foreign gods.
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They broke the covenant over and over again. And now they have to face God's sovereignty in bringing judgment to the house of Eli and to the nation of Israel who wanted a godless king.
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That's what this chapter is about. And it's crazy to read this story against our own sensibilities, right?
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Because there's something inside of us that says, that'll never happen to us. Oh, but it can.
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Consider also that Israel thought that they were really smart. Consider that Israel, they weren't thinking, how can we destroy our nation?
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They weren't, but they didn't listen to Samuel. So they weren't listening to wisdom.
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They were being wise in their own eyes. See, we have to see the wisdom of God displayed in him as a righteous judge over Eli and his sons.
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We have to understand that Eli's sons weren't guiltless either. We have to see
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God as king and we have to see his power over everything in creation.
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It's not easy to do. But when we see them, when we begin to see these two things, they can become for us indicators that our heart is growing in wisdom.
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Now it's an important message, especially as we're getting close to an election, right? How easy it is for us to put our faith in men, to put our faith in government.
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Do we believe that the future of our elections are outside of the control of God?
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Do we believe that? I mean, as we're doom -scrolling through Instagram, right, and we're seeing all of this information telling us that we need to be afraid, are we afraid?
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Does that motivate us? Are we able to put down Instagram and get on our knees and say,
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God, I trust in you? We have to see our relationship with God's sovereignty as a cooperation with his will, okay?
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This comes from Dr. Joseph Boot. He says, we are in a perpetual cooperation with God in history for the glorious purpose of his kingdom.
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Let me say that again. We are in a perpetual cooperation with the God in history, with God in history for the glorious purpose of his kingdom.
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And that's the reason why we can sing a mighty fortress is our God, right? A bulwark never failing.
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And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear for God has willed his truth to triumph through us, through us.
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This is why we vote. This is why we share the gospel with people around us.
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This is why we go to the doctor. This is why we pray, because we're cooperating with the perfect will of God, but our hearts are trusting in him completely, absolutely.
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We can have hope that even if we are judged for our actions required by God's will for good or bad, we do have hope, and that hope is in Jesus.
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Boot also says the source of our hope was and is the work of the atonement, a salvation accomplished through Christ's suffering,
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Christ on the cross in our place, taking God's wrath for his chosen elect.
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This is the single most important event in history that demonstrates our victory, our hope, our meaning, even in suffering, even in our darkest day, because our
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God works wonders for us, for his own, even through the darkness of tragedy, even through the darkness of loss, even through the darkness of pain.
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He is the God who works all things for our good, all things, to those who love
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God who are called according to his purpose. So if that's true, the final question is to ask, do you belong to God?
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Are you his? Because if you are his, you should have no fear, because you're believing in a
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God who controls everything. You can either cooperate with his will, you can participate with it, and what a glorious and beautiful design that it is.
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It's better than anything anyone could have ever thought of. Even in its darkest moments, it is still more perfect and beautiful than anyone could have ever thought of.
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Will you participate with him, or will you, like the nations, rage against him?