You know why? God has martyrs.
So he doesn't have only people who can stand up here and preach. when everything is nice and calm. Martyrs are those who still preach. as they're being bled to death. Because It's true.
and because God helps them do it. And so those who preach during days of peace know I got the same God. And they should come to knives. I go out the same way. Not because of me, but because of him.
And that's true whether a man is in a pulpit or a person is before another person or believers before unbelievers. You're listening to Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1 Samuel. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about cross-reference radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching.
One Man's Influence is the title of Pastor Rick's message, and today he'll be teaching in 1 Samuel 7. I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health. What's the opposite of that? Oh, I hope you suffer and are sick.
Well, of course that'd be hellish.
So he says, I want you to do well. Not this junk prosperity teaching, you know, just God becomes some sort of a cosmic bellhop. We just run off to get you what you want. That's not. Prosperity.
Prosperity is To have what you need to survive, yes. And more? as God gives. And then he says this. Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health just as your soul prospers.
Well, how does the soul prosper? In Christ's likeness, that's how the soul prospers. And without that, without that feature, there's no prosperity. And how does what is the Christ's likeness?
Well, sacrifice out of love. based on truth. Take those two away. You got what do you got? You got nothing.
Verse 5. And Samuel said, Gather. all Israel to Mizpah. And I will pray to Yahweh for you. You gotta like this guy.
He says, get the people together. He's talking about all the tribes. He's going to bring unity and obedience into the front line of the nation's life. Gather all Israel to Mizpah. He chooses the spot.
He's a man of prayer, and he's also a man of answered prayer. That's significant, is it not? And he makes this distinction. Between Yahweh and anything else somebody else might believe. And so he says, Gather all Israel to Mizbury, and I will pray to Yahweh for you, not Ashtareth, not Baal.
Yahweh, He is God.
Now he saw that the wages of sin is death when he was growing up in the temple, and Hophnai and Phineas were around him. He saw that junk. He learned what bad ministry was all about. by having to endure it. And so he takes two major steps to heal the nation.
From centuries of fragmentation. Oh, we come across that. You come across a life that has been spent in debauchery, and then we preach the gospel to them, and God starts to rebuild. He restores. He makes things a lot different.
So obedience to Yahweh. because there was flagrant disobedience. Carefree. And that carefree attitude towards obedience dammed up the flow of blessings. It stopped them.
And so they were oppressed by the Philistines. And the Philistines are going to make a move on them in this chapter. They had to stop. Tolerating and sheltering idolatry. Not only did the toleration of idolatry, but sheltering the ideas and thoughts that came with it.
To this day, we Christians have to guard against sheltering things that are offensive to God as clearly laid out in Scripture. I mean, you cannot. Excuse somebody for stealing, you know. to make to go buy themselves something nice. Tribal unity was the next step.
Isolation. The tribes were isolated. Even the clans were isolated largely. to a fault. And that enabled the idolatry.
The uh the enemy has armies. And armies are not isolated. Not if they're going to be victorious. And uh he is telling the people, we have got to be One nation unto God, indivisible. That used to be a pledge of allegiance in this country to the flag and has been outlawed in the minds of many.
There's a lot of wisdom to it, but there's more so here. And so he's trying to centralize the nation under God. This was his solution, and it was right because it came from God. And God would take Three steps to pull this off or to bring the nation into her golden age.
So when Solomon ascends the throne, they're in the golden age, literally. Silver was like, what is that?
So Samuel would begin. to take them back to the basics of what? The law. The law of God. And the Christian has to go back to the basics.
You know the Sermon on the Mount is not the basics of Christianity. Turning him out is a wake-up call. It's an alarm clock. That continues to ring in the background at the very least. But there's more.
to Christianity that we get through the precepts and the teachings. Samuel began to take them back to the law of Moses. And he would be used to give them a king of their choosing to shut them up. They were the one that said, Yeah, God's not enough that God's our king. We want a real king.
just like the other nations. That to me was the the worst part of it. When the church looks to the world, how's the world doing it? Let's find out how to be a church from the world. It's like, why not from the book of Acts?
Why not from the Corinthian letter? And there's a lot to learn about how to be a church and how not to be a church. Just from the scripture, just from the New Testament.
Well, Samuel was going to give the nation a king also after the one of their choosing, the one of God's choosing. The one that God would speak to. Of course, I'm talking the difference between Saul and David, and this would issue in about 200 years of the Golden Age.
Now, notice he does not act presumptuously and say, I will pray for you, and God will do what I pray. He doesn't promise them anything, I'm going to pray to Yahweh. What Yahweh will do after that, we're going to find out, aren't we? Verse 6.
So they gathered together at Mizpah, drew water, and poured it out before Yahweh, and they fasted that day. And said there, We have sinned against Yahweh, and Samuel will judge the children of Israel at Mizpah.
Now this is not every single person in the nation, of course. For sure it's the tribal leaders and heads of clans. They are most certainly there because they're the ones that will spread the influence to whatever they receive from Samuel will spread from them. And so by assembling the people, And calling them to repentance, he is acting as the leader of the nation, as a judge.
Now, Samuel's not a priest. He is a judge. And he is a prophet. And he oversees the priest. Because he's got that much influence from God without violating the priesthood, which is critical because he is a Levite.
But he gives the word: we're going to go here and we're going to serve the Lord and we're going to sacrifice. And the priests are going to carry out the ritual, but it's on Samuel's word. And we remember That God put him there, what would happen if he wasn't there?
Well, we know what would happen. We look back at two books back to the book of Judges, and we find out that they didn't have anything like this. And so, this pouring out of the water seems to express a heartfelt, genuine. Repentance, that just the sorrow of their hearts poured out before the Lord. The burnt offerings, the Holocaust, the whole burnt offering, the entire thing was consumed.
You did not eat any of it. And this was, it indicated dedication to God. This is all yours, God. All of it I'm giving to you. And so this is a solemn.
Ceremonial act. And that points to their sincerity. But also there's more. to their purification which Includes separation. It's not a, if you're going to be purified, water being, of course.
an emblem of purification, they're going to have to separate. From the fake gods and the gods of the peoples. Verse 7 Now when the Philistines heard that the children of Israel had gathered together at Mizpah, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel, and when the children of Israel heard of it, They were afraid of the Philistines.
Well now this is not all happening on the same day. There's a lot. I mean people are traveling at the speed of cart. or foot or donkey, and not even tall donkeys.
So, you know, this is spread out and it takes a while to not only to amass an army, but to have the provisions to feed the army. And not only do you have to feed an army, you've got to water them. And so this you some time here. But the Philistines are alarmed. that the Jews have gathered.
They see this as, you know, hey, they're going to get together and they're going to come against our interests. We're not going to let this. A public gathering go forward. In verse 8, so the children of Israel said to Samuel, Do not cease to cry out to Yahweh our God for us, that he may save us from the hand of the Philistines.
So they're not willing to go to battle to engage the enemy unless this man of God is praying for them. That just flies off the page. We're going to fight the Philistines. We're not going to just disband. We are going to fight them.
But we need you to pray for us.
So the children of Israel said to Samuel, do not stop crying out to God for us. It is Again, not magic. It is what we do as Christians. We are commanded to pray. Men ought always pray, Jesus said, and not lose heart.
Luke chapter 18. It is encouraging when people go to the house of the Lord and go to the pastors and say, pray for this, please. I mean, I don't mean minutia, you know. Just you know, stack the Frail us with stuff that is really not under our sphere of responsibility to the point you burn us out. And so we we try to control it a little bit and keep it close to heart.
Because we can't be praying, there's too much. It's just too much, it's overwhelming.
So you have to manage it a little bit. And this is what is happening. This is they're not asking for they're asking for a direct need that affects all of them right now. I'm sure Samuel must have said, He must have been very grateful that the people were coming to him and saying, Pray for us. This is in contrast to that debacle at Aphax where they lost the ark.
We read of none of these things. We read of, you know, the two fool priests, Haphthai and Phineas, you know, taking the ark to the battlefield as a mascot. We're not getting that here. They're not even bringing the ark. The Israelites are no longer depending on the Ark of God to be this magical mascot.
They're depending on God directly, and they're going to a man of God to appeal to God. They wanted to depend solely on Yahweh as their God through prayer, the invisible God. That's key because all of the other peoples were invisible. They had a little statue. You could say, this is what my God looks like.
And the Jew would say You're always invisible. We don't know what he looks like. We don't need to know what he looks like. We know what he can do. Ask the Egyptians.
And so the Philistines who were always on the offensive against the Jews at this time, ruling over them.
Now the Jews are going to end up on the offensive and they're going to be the upper hand, bottom rail on top. And verse 9, and Samuel took a suckling lamb and offered it as a whole burnt offering to Yahweh. Then Samuel cried out to Yahweh for Israel, and Yahweh answered him. Oh, there's the whole burnt offering I referenced earlier. I'm not going to go back into Samuel, he's not a priest, although he's a prophet, and that gives him, in these days, a lot of leeway with God, as we see Elijah on Mount Carmel much later.
But he cried out to Yahweh for Israel and Yahweh answered him. Again.
Now, the boy Samuel ministered to Yahweh before Eli, and the word of Yahweh was rare in those days. There was no widespread revelation.
Well, here it is. Yahweh answered him. This is the revelation. Things are changing in Israel's history. This is the effective and fervent prayer of a righteous man that avails much.
This is why James could say these things. And of course, Samuel's not the only. Precedence in Scripture for him to say that. Samuel himself was born out of fervent prayer. Everybody knows Hannah prayed fervently.
Except Eli. Eli thought at first he thought she was drunk. but she was fervent. And so he was a man of prayer. And that means he's a man in dialogue with God.
It's not just one speaking, they're both speaking. They're speaking to each other. Verse 10. God has made clear in Scripture what he thinks about Samuel long after Samuel died and went home. We'll come to those verses in a little bit.
Verse 10: Now, as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel. But Yahweh thundered with a loud thunder upon the Philistines that day, and so confused them that they were overcome before Israel. There's a parallel here.
Now, Samuel was offering up the burnt offering. What was the burnt offering? It was a suckling, it was a lamb. Parallel is, there's no victory without the Lamb. A Christian looks at this and says, the Lamb of God.
There's no victory without him. Because that lamb is also the lion. And as the Lamb was sacrificed and offered up to heaven, The blessings begin to descend upon. The troops and the people, the nation. It was the wrath of the Lamb.
Revelation 17, 14. These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them. For he is Lord of lords, King of kings, and those who are with him are called chosen and faithful. That be us. We are with the Lord.
Chosen and faithful. I know we don't. Not now, we're not totally there, not as we will be, but we are on the road. Charles Spurgeon says this in a sermon on this topic. He says, If any good has been accomplished, it has been through the Lamb.
The lamb slain? Or else the Lamb exalted. Um You read those old guys, you just don't crave a lot of new stuff. They just say such things. I would have gotten to this far on my own, probably.
The lamb slain, but I would have left out the lamb exalted, which is the key part of the whole statement. The lamb exalted. Samuel's offering because that's what the Jews are commanded to do. They know about the sacrifice. God has given them that system.
But we come and we look at this verse through New Testament eyes and we see so much more. And so, whatever we're going through, we endure. You don't like what God may and may not allow, but we say, You are still worth it, and you are still my God. The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Because we know that there's more beyond this life, and that's where we're going, and there's nothing anybody can do about it. The Philistines were not defeated without prayer and the righteousness of Samuel. Another lesson. These will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them. The Philistines drew near to battle.
They thought this was going to be an easy fight. More than likely. They're going to be so soundly beaten that they're not going to attack Israel. Again, until Samuel's no longer judge over Israel. This is going to be decisive.
Well, they come to address this uprising, but the Lord, I'm still in verse 10, but Yahweh thundered with a loud thunder upon the Philistines that day.
So God is demonstrating that Baal, who is thought to be the God of thunder, which brings the rain and the harvest and everything you need to live, Yahweh is saying, No, he's not. I control the weather. And the language recalls the prayer of Samuel's mother. 1 Samuel chapter 2: The adversaries of Yahweh shall be broken in pieces from heaven, he will thunder against them.
Now you know Samuel had to remember that because he put the prayer in the book. And in other words, he's connecting scripture, he's connecting what God has done and what God will do and what God is doing. He's connecting it. And so when we come to Scripture, though we learn the scriptural lessons, but we're not always relieved of our problems, the scripture is still scripture. There's still the God of Scripture to answer to.
To love and adore. God is not as upset about our suffering as we are. Most of the time. And yet, The Lord certainly uh is mindful at the death of the righteous. and our pain, The bottom of verse 10, and so confused them that they were confused, overcome before Israel.
They weren't puzzled. The thunder didn't puzzle them. Hmm. Did that come from the south or the north? They were inflicted.
It would terror. It was just that intense. Verse 11. And the men of Israel went out to Mizpah and pursued the Philistines and drove them back as far as. Beth Carr.
You know, the Jewish soldiers, I can't believe we're winning! I can't believe we're winning! We're finally winning! We're always getting whooped. Mizpah means watchtower, Bethkar, the house of the lambs.
And You can draw any connections you want to draw from that. Verse 12, then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen, and called its name Ebenezer. Saying, thus far Yahweh has helped us.
Now, this is after the battle they've won. And so he sets up a memorial to commemorate the victory. And whose pattern is he following?
Well, Joshua's. We read about no less than 10 monuments that Joshua set up, six of them out of stone. Even when he crosses the Jordan, they take the 12 stones out, they put the 12 stones in.
So this was supposed to serve. the people so they would remember. that their faith was built on action from God. And if they didn't believe it, that was on them. And so he's following Joshua's lead metaphorically.
The stones have ears and voices. That's why they're set up. Joshua 24, verse 27. And Joshua said to all the people: Behold, this stone shall be a witness to us. For it has heard all the words.
of Yahweh which he spoke to us, it shall therefore be a witness to you Lest you deny your God. Joshua was intense. I would just love to see these faces on these men when they said these things, when the power of God came upon them.
Well And maybe it wasn't as dramatic as I'd like to imagine it was. But I would have liked to have quickly gotten back to air conditioning, indoor plumbing, and things like that.
So it just would have been a little visit. Luke. Jesus tells us That the stones cry out. He says, But he answered and said to them, I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out. Look at this metaphor, this language rich with meaning.
He's saying it would be such an outrage to miss the king of kings, the God of creation, marching into Jerusalem.
Somebody's got to praise him. And if it weren't somebody, the stones would do it. That's how intense it was.
So Samuel says, thus far Yahweh has helped us. Eben Ezer. The Lord has helped, and That's the inscription. Paul said it this way in the New Testament. I find pretty much a parallel to everything.
You've got, again, 6,000 or more years of history of the Old Testament next to less than 100 years of New Testament history. And yet, in that less than 100 years, History You have them go back to the Old Testament and just shine light on all of it. Light enough. Paul standing before Agrippa, the same one as we said, except for these changes. He said, Therefore, having, this is his testimony.
This is what caused Agrippa to say, Well, that's incredible, Paul. Therefore, Paul says, having obtained help from God, to this day I stand witnessing both to small and great, saying no other things than those which the prophets and Moses said would come. The authority of this man in front of God, I don't care what you do with me. I'm preaching what Moses taught. Because we have the same God.
And I'm not saying anything new. But the words that stand out The Ebenezer part of Paul's Word is, therefore, having obtained help from God. When he was suffering shipwreck, he said, God stood by me, sent an angel to stand by me this night. John's Gospel chapter 14, and I will pray the Father, and he will give you another helper that he may abide with you forever. And so, yeah, it means something to us.
It's not something that belongs to the Jewish people and not to Christianity. The stone of hell Our rock. Victory took place on the very spot, the very spot that's marked by defeat, because 20 years earlier, here they were defeated. this same battlefield. Not all the scholars agree with that, but sometimes they're wrong, and that's one of them.
The questioning of their location, I don't question it. Verse 13.
So the Philistines were subdued, and they did not come any more into the territory of Israel, and the hand of Yahweh was against the Philistines all the day of Samuel. You know why God has martyrs.
So he doesn't have only people who can stand up here and preach. when everything is nice and calm. Martyrs are those who still preach. as they're being bled to death. Because It's true.
and because God helps them do it. And so those who preach during days of peace know I got the same God. And they should come to knives. I go out the same way. Not because of me, but because of him.
And that's true whether a man is in a pulpit or a person is before another person, or believers before unbelievers. This is our faith.
Well, here in verse 13, where it says the Philistines were subdued, and they did not come any more into the territory of Israel, and the hand of Yahweh was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel.
So they stayed out of the Jewish neighborhoods.
So long as Samuel judged Israel, and he judged Israel up until Saul becomes king. Then, of course, the Philistines say, ah, new sheriff in town, let's try him. And they found out that Saul was so obsessed. with persecuting a righteous man who's just maniacal. That he forgot all about.
Well, he just dismissed the Philistine. He didn't care. He'd rather kill David. Than protect the nation from the Philistines. And as a result, The Philistines killed Saul and his sons.
You go look at Mount Gaboa, and it stands there, like, you know, just out in the open. It's unmistakable. That's where Saul died.
Well, the Lord was against the Philistine all the days of Samuel, or rather, upon them. He kept them in check. No more incursions from them. Verse 14. Then the cities which the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel from Ekron to Gath.
And Israel recovered its territory from the hands of the Philistines. Also, there was peace between Israel and the Amorites. Everybody got in line now. They said, oh, Sam, Sam, Samuel's leading the people, not Samson. And everybody just lined up on their side of the Town and left the Jewish people alone.
So the tribes and clans, or the clans within the tribes that lost territory to the Philistines, were now resettling their territory. This must have been a huge battle, and Samuel opts to just not put it in. He doesn't put in like 400,000 of them died or something like that. He just, we won. And it was so decisive, we took cities back.
And they left us alone. And the other people who weren't part of the Philistines, they left us alone too. They saw the beatdown.
Okay. Yeah. Thanks for joining us for today's edition of Cross Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville, in Virginia. Currently, Pastor Rick is in the book of 1 Samuel.
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