1 Samuel Chapter 14

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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00:06

Hey, we're going to read 13 again, the whole chapter, so we can kind of get a little bit of a review of what happened leading up to...

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Remember, we stopped at the end of verse 13, and then we'll do a quick little review on something, and then we'll pick up.

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So let me begin reading.

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Saul was 30 years old when he began to reign.

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He reigned 42 years over Israel.

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Now Saul chose for himself 3,000 men of Israel, of which 2,000 were with Saul in Michmash in the hill country of Bethel, while 1,000 were with Jonathan at Gibeah at Benjamin.

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But he sent away the rest of the people, each one to his tent.

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Jonathan smote the garrison of the Philistines that was in Gibeah.

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When the Philistines heard of it, then Saul blew the trumpet throughout the land saying, Let the Hebrews hear.

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All Israel heard the news that Saul had smitten the garrison of the Philistines, and also that Israel had become odious to the Philistines.

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The people were gathered together with Saul at Gilgal.

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Now the Philistines assembled for themselves to fight against Israel, 30,000 chariots, 6,000 horsemen, and the people which were like the sand which is on the sea in abundance.

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And they came and encamped in Michmash, east of Bethhaven.

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And when the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait and the people were hard pressed, then the people hid themselves in the caves of Thickets, the cliffs of Sellers, and the pits.

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Also some of the Hebrews crossed over to the Jordan, to the land of Gad and Gilead.

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But as for Saul, he was still in Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling.

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So they waited seven days according to the appointed time set by Samuel.

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But Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the people were beginning to scatter from Saul.

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So Saul said, Bring to me the burnt offerings and the peace offerings.

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And he offered the burnt offering.

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And as soon as he had finished offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came.

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And he said, but I'm sorry, and Samuel came and Saul went out to meet him and to greet him.

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But Samuel said to him, What have you done? And Saul said, Because I saw that the people were beginning to scatter from me and that you had not come within the appointed days and that the Philistines were assembling at Micmash, therefore I said, Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not asked for the favor of the Lord.

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So I forced myself to offer the burnt offering.

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And Samuel said to Saul, You have acted foolishly.

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You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, nor what he has commanded you.

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For now the Lord would have established your kingdom forever over Israel.

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But now your kingdom shall not endure.

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And the Lord has sought out for himself a man after his own heart, and the Lord has appointed him as a ruler over the people, because you have not kept that which the Lord had commanded.

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Then Samuel arose, and he went from Gilgal to Gibeah of Benjamin, and Saul numbered the people who were present with him, about six hundred men.

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Now Saul and his son Jonathan and the people who were present with him were staying in Gibeah of Benjamin while Philistines were still encamped at Micmash.

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And the raiders came from the camp of the Philistines in three companies.

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One company turned toward Orpah, the other Shual, and another company toward Beth Haran, and another company toward the border which overlooks the valley of Zibium towards the wilderness.

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But there was no blacksmith who could be found in the land of Israel, for the Philistines said, otherwise the Hebrews will make swords and spears.

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So all Israel went down to the Philistines, each to sharpen his plowshare, his mattock, his axe, and his hoe.

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And the charge was two-thirds of his shekel for the plowshare, the mattock, and the forks, and the axes, and to fix the hoes.

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So it came about that on the day of the battle, neither sword nor spear was found in the hands of any of those who were with Saul and Jonathan, but with Jonathan and Saul was a sword.

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And the garrison of the Philistines went out to the pass of Michmash.

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Okay, remember last week we talked about the textual variant in the beginning passage.

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So chapter 13 begins the introduction to Saul's reign.

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That's what we need to remember.

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This is going to now...

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Yes, sir.

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I know, Jack.

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I know your Bible's different than ours.

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No, a matter of fact, I bet there's probably four different translations of that in here.

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And is yours in italics? Is yours in italics? No, who's got King James? King James, yours in italics, isn't it? It's got a different lettering? No, it's not.

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It's not? It should have been in italics or it's in brackets or it has a footnote in some of your study Bibles.

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It should have a footnote in the manuscripts that we have.

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There is some variation.

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Some of those dates and times were lost.

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So what they did is they tried to use some interpretive stuff from back in Acts 13, where it says, if y'all remember last week, they said in the book of Acts that Saul had reigned for 40 years.

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So he took 40 years plus the two that he began his reign.

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Some passages come to the 42.

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Then there were others.

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Other translations actually just put ellipses, the three dots, because we don't know exactly.

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But the interpreters and the Masoretic text, when we have our English, when they use it to try to keep the same pattern of all the other kings.

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As we move forward, or as you move forward in your Bible, as you read, when you go through first and second kings, it'll always say, so-and-so was this old when he came to power.

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He reigned this many days.

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So they're trying to keep the same pattern.

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Bert, you've taught a long time.

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Was that kind of your understanding of it as well? Yes.

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Okay.

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So, excuse me, that's what they're trying to do.

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We don't have the exact numbers.

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There is a variation.

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But let's don't doubt the fact that Saul was a real king, reigned for a real time, and he reigned for 40 to 42 years, okay? All right.

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So, Saul got himself, it says here, now Saul chose for himself 3,000 men of Israel.

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Now, if we go back to when he begins to offer the sacrifice, you remember how many people were left? 600.

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You remember? So what did he do? He saw the people running, people meaning the people that he had picked to fight.

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So he had 3,000 men to fight with him.

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They were trembling.

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They were beginning to disperse from him.

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They had been waiting six days.

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And if you remember back in chapter 10, around verse 7 through 9, he was given instructions by Samuel, when you get to Gilgal, you wait for me, and I will offer the peace offering and the burnt offering.

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That's what this is referring to.

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He gets there.

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He's waiting six days.

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He on the seventh morning, basically, he wakes up.

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Hey, Samuel's not coming.

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The people are dispersing.

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I better do something.

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But to get the favor of the Lord, because Samuel's not here, we're fixing to go into battle.

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And what does he do last week? Because that's kind of where we stopped.

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He offers up the burnt sacrifice on his own.

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Samuel shows up on the scene, and he says this.

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This is verse 13.

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You've acted foolishly.

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Why did he act foolishly? Why did he say he acted foolishly? He didn't trust in God.

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What was Saul's problem? He was not the one equipped to offer the sacrifice, but why did he offer up the sacrifice? He was trying to earn the favor of the Lord.

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Did he need to earn the favor of the Lord? Did he need to placate God in any way to win the battle? Did he? Would this be a time to answer? No.

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No.

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Who was King Saul commissioned at at the beginning? What did God say? He will deliver my people from the Philistines, no matter his unfaithfulness.

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Okay? Forget about his unfaithfulness as a king for a minute, okay? Was he going to be a successful deliverer of God's people from the Philistines? Yes.

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Let's even point back to Samson.

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Samson.

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Was Samson faithful to God? No.

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Was he a successful deliverer? Yes.

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Yes.

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What did God tell Manoah and Mrs.

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Manoah? Your son will deliver my people from their enemies.

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And that's exactly what he did.

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God was faithful to himself and faithful to the covenant he made with his people.

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Same thing with Saul.

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Saul was going to be a successful deliverer no matter what.

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Does not mean he was going to be faithful to God.

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And we're seeing the beginning stages of that already right now, early in his reign.

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Remember, he had, how I understand it, the King James, and I think the new King James, says he reigned one year.

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Then after two years, he began to go out and make his conquest.

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Did he wait around two years? He was almost sitting on his hands before he started delivering the people from the Philistines.

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And how do we know that? What does it say that the Philistines had put in place to keep the people from making spears and swords? A garrison.

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Well, they put a garrison and then removed all of the blacksmith out of the land of Israel into the land of Philistines so they couldn't make any swords or spears.

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So now we get to verse 14 where he is told him in verse 13, you've acted foolishly, you've disobeyed God.

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And he said, I would have established your kingdom forever over Israel.

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And remember, forever, the Hebrew word olam does not always mean eternal.

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So the understanding would have been he would have set up for you a dynasty that would have lasted for a very long time.

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There is no Hebrew word in the Old Testament for eternal.

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I want you all to understand, there is not.

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Context determines that.

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When you speak of God, I don't know if I said this yesterday in the Psalms when we're talking about the nature of God and it says that you're from everlasting to everlasting.

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That is the word that's used, olam, in the Hebrew.

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What does that reveal about God? Does that mean God's not eternal? No, because we're talking about the character and nature of God.

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We know that God's character and nature is going to determine what that word means, okay? In this case, we know that he was not going to take the prophetic utterance from Jacob to Joseph that Judah was going to have the scepter forever.

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He was saying here, you would have had a dynasty that would have lasted.

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But because you've been foolish, it's done.

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Yeah, and he was based on...

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And I'm going to make a point here, and that's true.

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We're going to see...

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We're seeing a very...

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a distinction as we go through the next chapters.

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Towards the end, you're going to see Saul and then someone who's his opposite.

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Saul, then someone who's his opposite and how they react.

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And we're fixing to see that.

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You have Saul who saw, okay, like he saw, and then he acted based on what he saw, right? Is that faith? No, but we're fixing to see Jonathan who saw and went, no big deal.

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God will take care of it.

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We're fixing to see that.

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Jonathan, go ahead, buddy.

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You know, that was like real awesome.

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I never really thought about that, man, thinking in his heart.

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So many times, we can feel it so deeply that it causes us to disregard the Word of God.

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And I think that's the importance of us guarding our heart.

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And like you've been teaching, as far as like, what did God say? And we can get away from it.

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And even when he rebukes him, he says, God told you to do this, and you did this.

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And we find out Saul did it because of the people, because of whatever else he had in his mind.

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And Saul knew what he was doing because we went through all of that last week.

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You want me to get you something real quick? Yeah.

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I think there's some napkins back there.

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Last week, we...

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I need it.

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Last week, we saw that the actual words he used, I don't know if some of your translations may say compelled, forced, something.

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But he says, I forced myself to do it.

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He said, when I saw that you didn't come, I forced myself to make the sacrifice.

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He knew that what I'm fixing to do is not right.

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But I'm going to do it anyway because I need the superstitious act that I'm going to somehow get God's favor by being disobedient.

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He thought that, okay, Samuel's the one that's supposed to do this.

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He's not going to do it.

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I'll do it.

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Favor will be the same.

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And that was not the case.

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So now, when we get here to verse 14, but now your kingdom shall not endure.

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The Lord has sought for himself a man after his own heart, and the Lord has appointed him as a ruler over his people because you have not kept the Lord's commandment.

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Was that Saul? Was he a man after God's own heart? Who was he a man after? People's wants and desires.

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That's right.

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And remember, we can just keep listing.

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And when we get to the end, we're going to list all the things like he was just like the kings around them.

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He's going to take, take, take.

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He's going to do his own desires.

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He's even going to be so much like the kings of the nations around him that he's even going to be willing to kill innocent men and to slay priests who speak the Word of God to keep his power.

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Is that not what unfaithful kings of the world would do to keep their power? That's exactly what they do.

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Happens all through history.

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I mean, you just look at any nation that's risen up.

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They will kill people around them.

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Hey, look at what's going on now in the world today.

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You got that nut job over there in North Korea.

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He'll kill anybody that tries to take over his throne, per se.

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They want to be worshipped.

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Xi Jinping, all those men.

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They're dictators.

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Nothing's changed.

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So now we get to verse 15 of chapter 13.

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Then Samuel arose and he went up to Gilgal from Gibeah to Benjamin.

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And Saul numbered the people who were present with him, about 600 men.

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Now Saul and his son Jonathan and the people who were present with him were staying in Gibeah of Benjamin while the Philistines were encamped in Michmash.

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The raiders came from the camp of the Philistines into three companies.

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So they surround them, okay? They surround them from Orpha to Shual, others from Beth-Haran, another company towards the border which overlooks the valley of Zebahim towards the wilderness.

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And here again, there was no blacksmith who could be found in the land of Israel for the Philistines had otherwise, the Hebrews would make swords and spears.

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So we just said this.

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They didn't have any blacksmith.

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There was nobody making swords and spears.

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Why should they have even worried about having swords and spears? Why should the people go, man, we got to have a sword and a spear? I mean, come on.

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God raised up a man that killed a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey, okay? And then he had another dude who killed him, what was it, 600 with a goat of an ox? Why should they even worry about having a spear or a sword to fight the Philistines? They should be able to take their hoe, their plow, whatever, and just go out and swing it.

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Well, we'll fix and see what they're going to do.

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He says, so all of Israel went down to the Philistines, each one to sharpen his plowshare, his mattock, his axe, his hoe.

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The plowshare is the end of the plow that actually makes the runner.

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The mattock is an actual, it's almost like a pickaxe.

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And it says here the hoe was, you know, for tilling up rough.

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So basically just yard tools.

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The charge was two thirds of a shekel for a plowshare magnet.

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This is what they charged to sharpen each one of those.

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So it came about in the day of battle, neither sword nor spear was found in the hands of any of the people who were with Saul and with Jonathan.

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But there was one found with Saul and Jonathan.

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And the garrison of the Philistines went out to the pass of Micmash.

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Now, if you remember a couple weeks ago, I said 13 and 14.

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This is really an artificial break.

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13 and 14 should be read as one complete unit together.

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So now we're going to go into verse chapter 14.

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Now on the next day, Jonathan, the son of Saul, said to the young man who was carrying his armor, come, let us cross over to the Philistines' garrison that is on the other side.

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But he did not tell his father.

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So Saul, staying in the outskirts of Gibeah under the pomegranate tree, which is in Migron, and the people who were with him were about 600 men.

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There's Ahijah, the son of Ahitub, Ichabod's brother, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, the priest of the Lord of Shiloh.

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Anybody remember what happened to the priest? The line of Eli? What was said was going to happen.

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He was going to be cut off.

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So now we have a rejected king and a rejected priest together.

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It says back here, it says, Now on that day, Jonathan, the son of Saul, said to the young man carrying his armor, come, let us cross over to the Philistines'.

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You understand that this garrison, Saul saw the garrison over there, and what did he do? And he had 600 men left with him.

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What did he do? He sat under a tree and he became fearful and he offered up the burnt offering, which he should not have because he was fearful that the people wouldn't fight.

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Look at the faith of Jonathan.

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Jonathan's with his armor bearer.

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He goes, Check it out.

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You see all those dudes over there? Yep.

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Let's you and me go over there and whack them.

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So Jonathan sees the same thing, right? He sees the same thing, but look at the two different attitudes towards the enemies of God.

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One says, Man, if I don't do this superstitious act of I'm going to have the favor of the Lord go into the battle with my 600 men.

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And Jonathan's like, Hey man, those uncircumcised Philistines, they're not under the covenant of God.

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We should go over there.

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God's already given them into our hand.

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We're going to go over there and whack them.

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Dude, his armor bearer's like, we're going to see.

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He's like, All right, whatever you want to do, I got you.

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And those are some brave dudes, but it's because of their faith in Yahweh.

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It's not because they're just some courageous men.

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They believe that these were the enemies of God and that God was going to give them into their hands.

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Saul, in verse 2, Saul was staying in the outskirts of Gibeah under the pomegranate tree in Migron, and the people who were with him was still about 600.

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You had the rejected king with the rejected priesthood.

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He was wearing the ephod.

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Anybody's translation say anything other than ephod? I can't remember.

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Okay.

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What was the ephod? Anybody remember what the priest ephod was? It was a vest, but it had a specific device on it.

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And I don't know if we got into this back in Judges, but you had what was called the umam and the thermam.

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And you could go back into Leviticus.

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I'm trying to be there right now, but it was actual device in which they used to...

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It was basically for casting lots to get an answer from the Lord when he didn't speak audibly.

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So on that ephod would have been this device.

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It was two basically stones, and they would pull it off.

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They'd ask the Lord and basically roll it.

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He'd give him the answer through it.

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So he had the ephod.

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And the people did not know that Jonathan had gone between the passes by which Jonathan sought to cross over to the Philistines garrison.

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There was a sharp crag on one side, a sharp crag on the other.

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These crags were known, Bozes and Sina.

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One crag was opposite of Michmash, and the other on the south end opposite of Geba.

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Then Jonathan said to the young man who was carrying his arm, come on, let us cross over to the garrison.

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These uncircumcised, and perhaps the Lord will work for us.

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For the Lord is not restrained to save by many or few.

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You see the faith of Jonathan.

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He's like, it doesn't matter.

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We go across.

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If God gives us, it'll be for Him and for His glory.

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It doesn't matter how many He's with, whether it be 600, 3,000, 30,000, or just you and me.

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This is what God will do.

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Because God's not restrained to use men in numbers.

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His armor bearer said to him, do all that is in your heart, turn yourself, and here I am with you according to your desire.

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Dude, that guy says, whatever you want to do, I got you.

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You want to go in there and try to kill them all? Let's go kill them all.

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Then Jonathan said, behold, we will cross over to the men and reveal ourselves to them.

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If they say to us, wait until we come to you, then we will stand in our place and not come up to them.

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But if they say, come up to us, then we will go up for the Lord has given them into our hands and thus that shall be assigned to us.

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So here it is.

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He's believing by faith that if this is going to be assigned to us, if they answer this way from the Lord, then that's the way we're going to go.

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If they don't answer us that way, then we should step back for a while.

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Now, what about asking for signs? What do y'all think about that? Good, bad, indifferent? How many people ask for a sign today? I don't.

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They did not have the revealed, written word of God.

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So they at times had to trust in quote, alternate revelations, whether it be the Ummah, the Thurmah, or God give me a sign.

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Gideon, what did he do? He laid out a fleece, although his fleece he laid out three times, was three times an act of, but we most people believe were acts of faith, but he had already been told they were given to him.

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So the three times he left it out, he was basically an unbelief.

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Well, here they don't have the sign.

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Only thing the sign that he's got is that God says they're uncircumcised.

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They're outside the covenant.

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We're supposed to destroy them because they continually hurt our people.

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And if we go across and we ask them this question and they say, come on, let's go, then we'll fight them and God's going to give them into our hands.

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Verse 11 of chapter 14.

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And when both of them revealed themselves to the garrison of the Philistines, the Philistines says, behold, Hebrews are coming out of the holes.

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You remember when they saw the garrison coming and they were running after them, what did the men do? They didn't even fight last week.

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They just ran to the caverns, to the holes and they hid.

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Scared.

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They didn't even swing one axe, mattock, anything.

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They just ran and hid.

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So he's saying now, hey, these ones that were hiding, these Hebrews are coming out of these holes where they had hidden themselves.

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So the men of the garrison hailed Jonathan and his armor bear and said, come up to us and we will tell you something.

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And Jonathan said to his armor bear, come up after me for the Lord has given them into the hands of Israel.

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You know, as we go through this, we have, we constantly had, we'll just go back.

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You may remember what the, we had the rise of Samuel.

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We've got the rise of Saul.

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But into the rise of Saul, we have an unsung hero and that's Jonathan.

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We're going to learn a lot about Jonathan.

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Jonathan is a man of faith.

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Not much on character studies, but you just look at how this man reacts towards the enemies of God, his faithfulness to God versus faithfulness to the king.

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He is willing to have himself put to death for being faithful to God and faithful to the man that God has commissioned as the new king.

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Remember, you may remember who Jonathan was.

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He winds up being his best friend with? David.

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Against the command of the king.

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Matter of fact, King Saul was willing to put his own son to death on multiple occasions, I would say, but for helping David.

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So Jonathan is a man of faith.

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He is trusting that Yahweh is going to carry out his purposes regardless of what the eye can see.

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Was Jonathan a man of optimism or was he a man of faith? And what's the difference? Was optimism.

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Yeah, you can see with your eye and go, all right, this is what we have.

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This could come about if we work real hard, fight real good, and we could probably overcome this.

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But what does faith go? Faith had two men who saw insurmountable odds and went, this is no big deal if the Lord's wills.

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No big deal if the Lord wills.

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I know the health wealth prosperity people would say, oh, don't say that.

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It's not if the Lord's will.

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It's if you will, you claim it.

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No, Jonathan said we'll go up and if the Lord gives it, the Lord will give it to our hands.

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I'm teaching on Thursday mornings, starting to go through Daniel and another Bible study with some other men.

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And it is same thing with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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All right, did they have, they were standing, were they optimistic about being thrown into the fiery furnace? There's nothing optimistic about that.

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But what did they do? They had faith and said, we're not going to bow down.

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We're not going to worship you.

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And our God's able to save us.

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But even if He doesn't, we'll go to that furnace anyway.

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That's faith.

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That's the kind of faith that Jonathan had.

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It doesn't matter.

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We're going to go up.

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The Lord gives us it.

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He'll give it to our hands.

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And if He doesn't, oh, well, we're going to go and do what we've been called to do.

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So now it brings us to, we'll go to 12 again.

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It says, so the men of the garrison hailed Jonathan and his armor bearer and said, come up and we will tell you something.

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So Jonathan said to his armor bearer, come up after me.

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The Lord has given them into our hand.

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And then Jonathan climbed up on his hands and feet with his armor bearer behind him.

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And then they fell before Jonathan and his armor bearer put some to death after him.

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The first slaughter which Jonathan and his armor bearer had made were 20 men within about a half an acre.

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And after, and there was a trembling within the camp and then within the field and the people trembled and even the garrison and the raiders trembled and the earth quaked so that it became a great quaking, trembling.

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Now Saul's watchman in Gibeah of Benjamin looked and behold, the multitude began to melt away.

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And they went after there.

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And Saul said to the people who were with him, number now and see who has gone out from us.

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And when they had numbered, behold, Jonathan and his armor bearer were not there.

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Then Saul said to Ahijah, bring the ark of God here for the ark of God was at the time, was with the children of Israel at that time.

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We're gonna stop right there and we'll probably pick up after that because once again, we have a textual variant here in some translations.

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So here it is, they have this, these people are beginning to disperse.

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They're trying to figure out why is the garrison leaving? What's going on? Saul then says, we need to find out what's going on.

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Are we missing someone? Then they find out that who's missing? Who's missing? Anne, armor bearer, two people are gone.

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So now he says, well, let's find out what's going on.

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And he says, he calls for Ahijah.

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Once again, who's Ahijah? He's a rejected priest.

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And he says, bring the ark of the Lord or the ark of God here.

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Now, does anybody say bring the ephod here? Okay, Septuagint.

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You know, there are other Greek translations of the Old Testament.

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Okay, Septuagint uses ark in some.

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Some translations of the Septuagint also, and the Greek word there is kippetan, meaning ark.

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They also use the ephod.

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I understand this to be the ephod, okay? And here's the reasoning why.

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You can disagree with me and I'm fine with that.

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The ephod was already on the chest of Ahijah, correct? If he's got the ephod on, he's got the umam and the thurman.

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So he's already got the device needed to speak to God.

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He did not need the ark of the Lord, okay? So my understanding of it is that he has the ephod on.

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He calls for him to bring that which he's going to speak to God.

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And we're going to see that in just a second.

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And also, if you go back, it says back in the beginning that he had the ephod with him.

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The ark was not with him.

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Where was the ark? If you remember, where had the ark been taken at this time when they got it back for the Philistines? Kiriath Gerium and Abinadab's house.

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That's where it stays for some 60 years, 67 years or something.

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So we have no indication that they'd ever left Abinadab's house at this time in Kiriath Gerium.

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This would be the only time.

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So, and when it says it was, even if it's saying the ark was with the children of Israel at this time, it's because it was in the land of Israel.

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It was not in the land of the Philistines.

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Now, the Hebrew Masoretic text used the word ark in most of its translations.

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But in others, it does use ephod.

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So you all can draw your own conclusion.

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I think it can go either way.

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From the ark of God was there at the time, verse 19.

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We'll go ahead.

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Well, any questions? We've got seven minutes.

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Disagreements.

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Faith in himself.

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Sure.

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And the problem with Saul is the object of his faith.

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His object of his faith is unfaithful.

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I mean, Saul's decisions and faith is not an objective truth.

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It's based on circumstance.

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Faith is never based on circumstance.

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Never.

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Look, circumstances will come and go, but the God will always be the same.

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That's why our faith should never be in circumstance.

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And I'm not saying we shouldn't look at things and have an, quote, optimistic attitude about outcomes, okay? I'm not saying that that in and of itself are wrong.

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But understand that optimism does not change the fact that bad things could happen.

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And then you have to explain that.

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When you have faith in God, and when things don't turn out the way that you want, you can put your faith still in God, that God's working out His purposes, regardless of the outcome, okay? I mean, when we were in Isaiah, I mean, Psalm 46, what was it? It does not matter.

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God's working out His purposes.

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He is our refuge.

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He is our strength.

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And He is our help, no matter what the outcome.

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In this case, Saul did not want the outcome of the Lord.

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He wanted the outcome of himself.

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And he's willing to do whatever extreme measures to do that.

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And as we go continue on, you're going to see that man, the more he trusts in himself, the more he jacks things up.

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I mean, God's already told him through the prophet, because of your unbelief and because of your disobedience, I'm going to have a man after my own heart.

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You're not the guy.

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Anything else before we move forward? All right, verse 18, And Saul said to Ahijah, Bring the ark of God here.

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For the ark of God at that time was still with the children of Israel.

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And while Saul was talking to the priest, the commotion of the camp of the Philistines continued and increased.

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So Saul said to the priest, Withdraw your hand.

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That's why I believe, once again, he's talking about the ephod and the ummin and the thurum.

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Because he's saying, Withdraw your hand.

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No need to ask for what's going on.

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Withdraw your hand from casting.

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He's trying to get an answer from the Lord.

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He said, So withdraw your hand.

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And then Saul said to the people who were with him, Rallied and came to the battle.

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And behold, every man's sword was against his fellow.

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And there was a great confusion.

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Now the Hebrews who were with the Philistines, This is interesting.

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If you go back, that means when they were dispersing and running back in the beginning of chapter 13, you had some traitors.

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What did they say? Now the Hebrews who were with the Philistines previously, cowards, didn't want to fight for their own people.

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Now that they see this act of God taking place against the garrison, they go, You know what? We should probably, to save our own skin this time, let's go back to the Hebrews.

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So they go back to the Hebrews.

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They went up with them and all around the camp.

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Even they also turned to be with the Israelites who were with Saul and Jonathan.

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And verse 22, And when all the men of Israel, who had hidden themselves in the hill country of Ephraim, heard that the Philistines had fled, even they also pursued them closely into the battle.

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So the Lord delivered Israel that day at the battle spread beyond Bethhaven.

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Who delivered? Who did? Yahweh did.

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That's right.

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Not Saul.

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Not Jonathan.

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Just as Jonathan was used as a vessel to go in and kill the garrison, no different than Samson was a vessel.

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Gideon was a vessel.

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Jephthah was a vessel.

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All of them.

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Who was the hero of the Bible continually? God.

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God.

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We'll pick up verse 24 of chapter 14 next week.

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Once again, we're going to have a foolish vow next week.

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Very foolish.

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You remember the last time we had a foolish vow? It was in here for judges.

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Jephthah.

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Stupid vow.

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Foolish.

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Saul, being a fool, does the same thing.

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Tim, you'll pray us out, brother? Father God, we do thank you to be attentive, that our hearts will be open to receive.

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Bless the man of God as he speaks your word to your people.

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We ask this in the name that is above every name, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

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Amen.

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Amen.