It is not unlike God to give those who deserve no more chances one more chance. And sometimes We prevail.
Sometimes we do well. We take that second chance and we run with it. But it's up to the individual. It's not automatic. And while God may know, we have a say-so.
in what he knows in this sense. I think sometimes God gives people a second chance to the irritation of those who want to see no more chances given. This is 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. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of 1 Samuel chapter 15 as he begins his message one last chance. 1 Samuel chapter 15. Entitled One Last Chance. Going to split the chapter.
We'll get the second part next session, Lord willing. Because there's so much here. There's so much benefit to considering the life of Saul. Right before we get to the life of David, which begins next chapter. And as bad as Saul is.
He's not the worst person in the Bible. I mean, consider the Levite in Judges 19 and 20 who hacked up his concubine and sent parts around. I mean, it's just sick. Is Haman? Ahab, Jezebel, Athaliah, Antiochus Epiphanes, and Daniel gets into the prophecies concerning him.
Herod the Great. The slaughter of the innocents at Bethlehem.
So there are words, characters, just that we have so much about Saul, we get to sort of stew. in his wickedness. And there's also Absalom, they have a lot about him coming up.
So there are others, lest you think that Saul is being Picked on. If there were a single characteristic About This man that makes him so foul, it is that self-serving pride. It it turned a cherubim into a a devil. Lucifer became Satan. The self enthronement is what this self-serving pride is all about.
Self-enthronement at the exclusion or the belittling of others. Everybody else is smaller, I am bigger. And Saul had a big case of this, and it is good for us to consider his life. Lest we make such a foolish mistake.
Now No one decent would root for this man's failure.
However, when we are faced with his Violent determinations. Violent determinations to hurt others, we have to make a choice. It becomes near criminal to pity him too much. God had to deal with Samuel just a little bit on that. All Samuel needed was a nudge, but he needed the nudge.
Look at First Samuel sixteen chapter seven. sixteen verse one Now Yahweh said to Samuel, How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I am sending you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided myself a king among his sons. Samuel, come on, we can get past this.
It's a fact, you've got to accept it. It's distasteful. But you have to accept it. Misplaced pity is unjust. It becomes it can become sin.
Even Samuel. Again And with all of his emotions that were invested in this man, he had to face facts and trust God. He had to submit to what God was doing with such a character as Saul. He was not telling Samuel you have to hate Saul now. He's just saying you're spending energy where it does not need to be spent.
There are bigger and better places for you to invest yourself, and I am sending you there.
So now we look at verse 1. Samuel also said to Saul, Yahweh sent me to anoint you king over his people, over Israel.
Now, therefore, heed the voice. Of the words of Yahweh.
Now, let's not lose sight of the title, One Last Chance, because that is what Saul is getting. We're just happening to, we're reading it after the fact. But when these events were taking place This was his last chance. God had already rejected him and said, You know, give you one more chance.
Now, God knew what he would do. But God did not cause it. And he lays it out for all the generations who would avail themselves of what's recorded in Scripture to benefit from the record. These events are several years after Jonathan led the victory against the Philistines and dipped his spear in the honey, and his father wanted to kill them.
Well, what happened after that?
Well, Saul went on these exploits. Look at chapter 14, verse 47 and 8. Saul established his sovereignty over Israel and fought against all his enemies on every side, against Moab, against the people of Ammon. Against Edom. against the kings of Zolbah.
Against the Philistines, wherever he turned, he harassed them, and he gathered an army and attacked them.
So, There we see he's moved on, he's building his army. He's doing what he's supposed to do as a king, but in his heart, Still, There are things that have not been addressed. And God is looking at this, and He's saying to us, I'm looking at Saul do these things. He's doing the right thing. I'm going to give him a chance to redeem himself.
And so during those years he increased the size of his army. Abner, his uncle, is put as commander of his army. He's behaving as a king. Together they waged a very successful campaign against those who would harm them. But the big test was coming.
Because, see, in all those battles, Saul was allowed to do as all the kings of the nations would do. When they defeated a people, they would plunder them. But God was now going to call Saul to be an instrument of judgment, not only protection for his people, but now an instrument of judgment for God, and plunder was not going to be a part of it.
So all the world would know. that this was a judgment. From God Himself on the Amalekite people. It was not a routine war. And The spoils hands off.
They were not to be taken. The people of God were not to benefit themselves. From the plunder Of those who had been judged. This was a mission, it was their duty. And Saul Really didn't care.
The Amalekites These were not good people. And God is saying, He will say throughout, that the monarchy, the rule over Israel belongs to God. Not to Saul. and not to Samuel. And though he is giving specific orders here in this first verse through Samuel to Saul.
Just like we have the scripture from the prophets, from the apostles. Incidentally, the New Testament says The foundation of Christianity. is built on Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone, foundation of the apostles and prophets, not the prophets and the apostles. The apostles first. And then the prophets, the New Testament prophets, Old Testament prophets.
So that we understand that we are ministers of the New Testament, a new covenant. We're not under the old covenant. There are elements of it that have been retained and carry over, and there are elements of it that have been. jettisoned. We're not using them.
And so here, years earlier, Saul, where he failed to obey God in that he did not wait for Samuel to come to make the blood sacrifices before battle. He took it upon himself, and of course he dismissed the priest and he just asserted the flesh over the spirit. And for that, Through the prophet Samuel, he was told that the kingdom would be taken from him, that there would be no dynasty. Samuel said, Your kingdom, your children would have followed you on the throne. You had such an opportunity, and you blew it because you'd put God second.
You put yourself first.
So And God, of course, makes note I'm going to give him another shot. And we're reading about it in this 15th chapter. Knowing he's going to blow it. But our eyes are not so much on Saul, they're on God. This last chance to save his throne.
And it is not unlike God to give those who deserve no more chances one more chance. And sometimes We prevail.
Sometimes we do well. We take that second chance and we run with it. But it's up to the individual. It's not automatic. And while God may know, we have a say so.
in what he knows in this sense. I think sometimes God gives people a second chance to the irritation of those who want to see no more chances given. I don't want Saul to have another chance. The guy's a creep. Wait, he was actually wasn't that bad yet.
But just knowing where it's going is, I don't want to see him have a chance, but he gets one. He says here in verse 1, Now therefore, heed the voice of the words of Yahweh, a serious wasted encouragement. I do not want to be the recipient of wasted encouragements. But you got to fight in Christianity. You don't have a choice.
If you want to do well, if you want to serve God, you put yourself first, which is the lesson again of these evil characters in Scripture, is that they put themselves ahead of God. They were more interested. In pleasing themselves, than pleasing God. It's very basic, it's very fundamental, it's not complicated. You do not need a degree from Yale or Harvard or anywhere else to understand.
That the Christian life is about obedience to God, pleasing God as best we can with what we have, and not ourselves first. And the flesh says we'll see about that. And then the fight is on. And that's why the gate is straight and it's narrow. You have to squeeze through it.
And Here he gets his chance. Not only does he get the chance, he gets the great prophet Samuel warning him, and what's all going to do with this chance? He's not going to listen. is going to blame others for not listening. when it is all him.
The cause of Saul's error was Saul and no one else. Those who are in hell have no one to blame but themselves. How God sorts it out and arrives at that.
sometimes as clear as a bell. Other times it's not. But he is God. and not applying for the job. And he's not a rookie at being God, never has been.
He started off Not as an amateur god, but fully perfect. And we rejoice in that. That's why we love them so much. Not only is the beauty of who he is that attracts us to God. But where we're going in God.
The heaven that awaits us. If it weren't true, I would not have told you. that I go to prepare a place for you. How amazing is that? Can you ever forget that verse once you've read it?
You might lose sight of it, but once someone brings it up, you don't say, oh, I didn't know that was in the Bible. You know instantly that was, I read that, I heard that before. Yet he goes to prepare a place for us, and if it weren't true, He would not have teased us with it. And there are so many things that make us love God. There's no single thing.
There's no single reason why we love God, yet in a single moment we can love Him. We can see enough. We can see manifold reasons why he is so beautiful. And then the test. And they're really in this Creation, there's no love without test, without a test.
to prove that love. And that's why we go through so much junk. The Angels were tested, and a third of them failed. In verse 2 now, thus says Yahweh of hosts, I will punish Amalek. For what he did to Israel How he ambushed him.
on the way when he came up from Egypt. Lord of hosts, he is the commander. In heaven and on earth. That is what that means. He commands the angels.
And he commands his people and his creation And so now he's moving in judgment on Amalek, the divine prerogative. He judges both now in this life when he wants to, and he judges after this life. God did not forget or dismiss this savage people's behavior, and they had been savage and cowardly. For a long time, and to the very time, at the very moment that Samuel is giving Saul these orders, they are still savage, they are still cowardly, they are still evil. When we get further along, I think it's verse 18, God will say there, these are sinners, and there's an emphasis there.
We're all sinners, yes, but there's a particular that God is pointing out concerning the descendants of Amalek. They are descendants of Esau. Esau felt that spiritual things were secondary, physical things were primary. That's the reverse of Jacob's view. In spite of Jacob's issues, and he had some big ones.
He's still Grasp the idea of God being superior to this. to the things in this life. Amalek, as we're told in Deuteronomy 25, attacking the Jews from behind, showing their cowardice, picking off the weak for no reason. They had no benefit to this. They could have just left the Jews alone, but they did not.
So Joshua engages them on the battlefield. You know the story. Moses is holding his arms up, praying, and Aaron and a man named Hur are holding his arms up, and they prevail. That was against the Amalekites. It had to be dealt with then, but not fully.
There. condition was irreconcilable. Their doom was fixed. God brings it out not only in Exodus and Deuteronomy through his prophet Moses, but he also employs Balaam to pronounce the judgments on them. In numbers twenty-four, So, the concept of justice, which does not exist in the animal kingdom.
A fish will not give you a dissertation on justice. And no other creature, humans, this is for those who are made in the image of God. We understand. Justice, the concept thereof, and we feel violated when justice is trampled upon. We want to see people going to jail.
There'd be nobody left in Washington if that were exercise, but Well, there'd be a few. Anyway, Men Have imperfect ideas of justice, men without God, and therefore they have imperfect justice. But we submit to God. When he says, I'm going to deal with Amalek, we don't say, oh, come on, that's so mean, you're so harsh. We say aye aye, sir.
And we are off. Executing the order. In fact, we repeat the order. You know, it's redundancy to make sure you've got it. Verse 3.
Now go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all they have. And do not spare them. but kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. Oh this is real. This is not something that's just, you know.
Oh, God is so harsh The Lord is saying in this verse If I've got to kill the wickedness, In its earliest stages, to prevent them from killing the righteous in their earliest stages, then so be it. It's their choice. Yeah, the Amalekites were aggressive, they were sneaky, and they were deadly, and they would have wiped the Jews off the planet if they could. And to this day, at the time that these events were taking place, they were still launching raids on the Jews. They were doing this to their people.
When we get to verse 33, next session. Samuel will say to Agag their king, the king of this city that they're going to attack. As your sword made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women. And then what does Samuel do? He hacks him to death.
Now that is not new covenant. You see the the importance of understanding new covenant, old covenant. We are We are to defend ourselves, but we are not to go and launch a f aggressive actions in the interests of whatever we think is right. We can uphold civil laws, but we are not to be vigilantes under the throne of God. Judgment, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else.
That's what this was. A very simple And we'll kind of break this down because, you know, there are those people that just think they're more merciful than God, and they are not. If you think you're more merciful than God, You're either lying or stupid. And that's it. And if you're lying, it's because you don't believe God.
He is Sovereign. He is perfect in all his ways, even in this cursed world. Because he does not lift the curse at the snap of his fingers, does not mean he's somehow imperfect. He is free to let it run its course for his purposes because his purposes are perfect. And by faith we accept that.
That's the whole chapter of 11 in Hebrews. By faith, they understood enough about God to keep pushing forward towards the throne of God no matter what. That's the whole story of Hebrews chapter 11, and that's the story of our lives too. I don't get it. I don't like it.
You're a God, I worship you, and that's enough.
Well The tragedy of Executing judgment on the Amalekites is not so much that this ethnic group would be removed from the face of the earth. The tragedy is that they were not fit to continue to be on the face of the earth in God's eyes. How come no one sees that? How come no one sees that? Poor God, why does God get saddled with these people?
Why does the people of God? Why are they put in jeopardy because these people are allowed to exist?
Well, here's a case where God says, I'm going to do something about it. And there are some who protest.
Now in Revelation we read that there are people in heaven from every tongue. I would have No objection to someone in their theology saying, You see these infants that were slaughtered here? You'll see em in heaven. I would not object to that. The adults Who chose wickedness over righteousness?
Another story. God will always do right, whether we see it or not. We will, those who believe, and ultimately we get to heaven and we'll see it. I think.
Well, well, we see the righteous in heaven, and there's silence in heaven for about an hour because we're just in shock. I can't believe I'm here. Really, I can't believe you're here. And that'd be a wonderful thing. That he does it all right.
None.
Well, it's all right. I mean, it is completely Correct.
Well He works through human means, like it or not. He calls us into fellowship with himself. What an honor! We find it sometimes as a drag.
So why do I got to do your dirty work, Lord? Don't be careful if you're going to. Say that, you might, a thought might flash across your mind, but you don't have to embrace it.
So God uses us in fellowship with Him.
so that his will flows through us, through sinners. What a smack in Satan's face. I'm gonna use these uh this motley crew to do you in. The whole story of Job. And It cost Job, but God pulled it off.
He will multiply the bread. But he will use human hands to distribute the bread. What an honor You know when Jesus multiplied the bread and the fish, we don't read about him eating. We read about him feeding everyone else, even his disciples. He raises the dead, but men have to roll the stone away and have to take the grave clothes off of Lazarus.
to complete the miracle. He still does it this way. He saves this persecutor named Saul of Tarsus through the words Of his Soon-to-be bloody martyred Stephen. And he makes a short little saying in Revelation. He says, Antipas, my faithful witness.
That's all he gets, my faithful water. Just uh sure that's it. I take that. Could you imagine your name? I mean, not just The name, but you.
Being mentioned in the Bible as a hero?
Well, you might not get to be mentioned in the Bible as a hero, but you get to be. Mentioned in heaven is one when Lord says, Enter in, well done.
So God is always on the lookout for useful people.
However, To be useful to God so that He can develop you and dispatch you. involves quite a few things. over a long period of time.
Sometimes it's just waiting, feeling like you're being passed over. You know, the song, Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior, while on others thou art calling, do not pass me by. If you're not serving God, that should be an ambition. How do you want to use me? And don't go thinking while you're making breakfast God's using you.
I mean, you know. What do you do that the house of God is the Primary or the platform for serving God. It is not the only place, but it is. in many ways the most excellent. It is his house.
It is blood bought. And the blood that bought it is pure, it's not animal blood. It's not human blood. It's the Son of God. And so there is Isaiah wondering, scratching his head: I'm a prophet, but how is God going to use me?
What good is being a prophet if I'm not sent? How shall they hear? How shall they believe if they don't hear? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?
Isaiah chapter 6, verse 8. This is when Isaiah, of course. Saw the throne of God and the Lord on it. The train of his robe filled the temple. Isaiah having this vision after King Uzziah died.
King Uzziah was on the throne 52 years, he was a good king. To have him drop dead like that left an incredible void. What's going to happen to us now? God gives the prophet a vision. And in the midst of that vision, he says, also.
I heard the voice of the Lord Adonai. Saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? Then I said, here I am, send me. And of course, his instructions were: go preach to these people how much of a knucklehead they are.
Like, no, no, I want to preach on love. I want to preach on the glory of the kingdom. I mean, every time I look for a topical message, my first stop is the throne. I want to preach on good things. And then God pushes me over.
This is there. Look, that stuff, they know these things. I need you to preach what they've lost sight of. And I don't know what that is until no pastor does, if he's seeking God's word, until he gets it from the Scripture. It should be the same with you.
If you're preaching to people out in the world, you don't know what to say to them until God gives it to you. At least not in power and force. 2 Chronicles 16, verse 9: For the eyes of Yahweh run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong on behalf of those who. whose heart is loyal to him. We can have loyal hearts in spite of our stumblings, our shortcomings, our sins, our failures.
It doesn't make us disloyal to Him in and of themselves. There's more to it. And Saul, he reveals to us what it is to actually be a flagrant sinner. as opposed to David, who also stumbled but was never Careless. Caught up.
Tangled, who is the last human being named in the Bible? David. Oh man, what an honor. You know, not Moses, I'm not as a competition, but how much truth and theology is built into just that? Wow.
Uh 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. If you'd like to listen again to this or other messages or share it with someone you know, please visit crossreference radio.com. Here, you can also listen to interviews with Pastor Rick to learn more about his life and ministry.
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