11-3-22 Kerwin Baptist Church Daily Broadcast

Welcome to the Kerwin Baptist Church broadcast today. Our desire is for the Word of God to be spread throughout the world so that all may know Christ. Join us now for a portion of one of our services here at Kerwin Baptist Church located in Kernersville, North Carolina.

The title of our message is morning and moving on, morning and moving on. I almost feel like God has led in the kind of the same direction as even last week. I don't know why God is doing this, don't know who needs to hear what.

Maybe it's just all because God knows I need it, I don't know, but whatever God is doing I'm going to obey and I'm going to do what he's asked me to do and he knows a lot better than I do. So look at verse one of first Samuel chapter 16. And the Lord said unto Samuel, how long wilt thou, here's our word, mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel. I hear all the Scofield's turning their page.

You'd have to have a Scofield to understand that anyway. Fill thine horn with oil and go, I have a Scofield by the way, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethelmite for I have provided me a king among his sons. Samuel said, how can I go? If Saul hear it, he will kill me. And the Lord said, take an heifer with thee and say, I am come to sacrifice to the Lord. Now there's a lot I could say to that, but I'm going to let that one go, all right?

No, he did not take his wife with him. I know some of you were thinking that, all right. Verse three, and call Jesse to the sacrifice and I will show thee what thou shalt do and thou shalt anoint unto me him whom I name unto thee. And let's look back at verse one, the Lord said unto Samuel, how long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel, fill thine horn with oil and go, mourning and moving on.

Let's pray. Lord, I love you. Thank you for all that you've done in my heart through this passage.

Maybe a work you're continuing. And Lord, as we kind of learn to once again, flex our corporate worship muscles, I guess you would say to submit ourselves to your word, to adjust back to the fact of understanding that many times you work in our heart in certain ways when we're alone, but you also work in our heart in certain ways when we're gathered together that are unique to that setting. So I ask you to do that. And all powers given to you and Lord, I pray that you would bestow some of that power upon the preaching of your word today in Jesus name we pray, Amen. This is an interesting passage. I'm going to try to briefly through some different points, kind of take you on a little bit of a journey through this book and kind of through this story of what happened and the Lord comes to Samuel here, Samuel was the prophet. They were kind of called seers, even in the Bible. That's when individuals kind of called prophets, they called them seers. And the prophets, Samuel here were basically judges. You see, God was king and God had his prophets as judges.

But obviously you know the story that the children of Israel rebelled against that. They wanted their own king. They wanted to have a person that they could kind of touch and see. And even though they didn't understand this, they wanted something visible to worship instead of trusting God, who they couldn't necessarily see and touch.

They began to look around at other nations and realize they had their kings and they had their symbols of authority. And can you imagine how fortunate they were that God was their king, but they wanted a different king. And so obviously God rejected Saul and Saul became that man, but as of course of time he was a good king and a great king for a while, but as God had warned before they chose themselves a king, he fell and he began to make bad decision after bad decision. And God had to end up rejecting him.

He disobeyed God. God rejected him from being king and Samuel obviously was the person that had helped anoint Saul as king who had advised Saul, trained Saul, spent hours with Saul. And when the time came that God said, hey, I've rejected him, Samuel literally tried to talk God out of that and really made effort, but God had made his decision. And the Bible says that when Saul had made those choices and God had made his choice that the whole thing came crumbling down. The Bible says that Samuel, and I'm going to show you Samuel and Saul kind of went their separate ways and Samuel never again went to see Saul.

And he went into what we call mourning. So I want to look at it in this thing in chapter 16 verse one, the Lord comes back to Samuel and you say, well, how long was this? And I'm going to show you a passage of scripture here in a minute. And God comes back to Samuel and he says, listen, how long are you going to be torn up by this? How long are you going to be discouraged and defeated by this? How long are you going to kind of hide yourself in your house and feel bad and down about what has transpired? How long are you going to do this? It's time for you to fill your horn with oil and go.

It's time to move on. Now I want to look at some passages and I just want to ask you, would you open up your heart and maybe let God work on you just a little bit? I want you to see number one, why? When I began, when I first shared this verse, I'm believing together, I just began to think what were the real reasons? Why was Samuel mourning so much over this? Number one, I want you to see he was disappointed in a person.

He was disappointed in a person. Now I have these verses up on the screen, but if you want to look at them just in the chapter before first, Samuel chapter 15, I want you to see what happened in chapter 15. These verses are up here, but verse 26, the Bible says in Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee for thou hast rejected the word of the Lord and the Lord hath rejected thee from being king over Israel. Then Samuel went to Ramah and Saul went up to his house to Gibeah of Saul and Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death. Nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul and the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel. You see all that Samuel had invested and tried and all that he had dreamed of, it all comes crashing down in just a matter of moments and Samuel became so disappointed in Saul. I mean he knew his potential and he knew deep down that he was a good man, but all the things that he had seen and hoped for and all the good qualities that he had witnessed and helped to kind of help to design. Now the Bible says that he was so hurt that he never went to see Saul again.

What a sad situation. God had given such a wonderful opportunity to Saul to be king. Samuel had invested so much trust and time. Saul had made one bad decision after another. God rejected Saul and even regretted choosing him, regretted allowing him to become king. Samuel goes his way, Saul goes his way and they will never see each other again, literally as far as speaking face to face until Saul is dead. Samuel withdraws himself from public ministry and do you know this? That at this moment when Samuel withdraws himself, the only thing he ever did of any public nature was anoint David. Other than that, God never had Samuel do anything public and had anything to do in ministry after that.

Now why is this so interesting? Because I didn't realize this, it ends in chapter 15, the last verse. Saul or Samuel, excuse me, mourned for Saul. Then in chapter 16 verse one, God says, hey, how long are you going to mourn for Saul? So I'm thinking, well, okay, do you understand, and I didn't realize this, I had to dig in and I had to kind of go and as best we can tell, do you know it was anywhere from seven to 11 years from the last verse of verse 15 to the first verse of chapter 16? It's not like this is the next day and God says, how long are you going to mourn for Saul? You see, we do know that David was around 30 years of age when he became king when Saul died. And we do know that David was probably less than 20 years old when Samuel anointed him. But we do know that after God rejected Saul and Samuel left Saul, that we do know that Saul was king for another almost 10 years and he conducted many military battles without the help of God now, which led to the demise of Israel and all those things.

And so literally the numbers don't lie. And if you have your Scofield Bible, you'll even notice the dates. If you look at the pages from where chapter 15, the heart of chapter 15 and the heart of chapter 16, there's 10 to 15 years difference there. This isn't Samuel kind of got hurt, went home, thought about it the next morning God knocks on his door. Hey, are you over it?

No, this was years. Samuel was disappointed in a person, somebody he had high hopes in. Have you ever been disappointed by a person? Listen, some of the most wonderful members of our church have had experiences in the past where a mate, a husband or a wife disappointed them. We have people all over this area that are not in church this morning and not just because of COVID. They haven't been in church for years and they probably won't darken the door of a church for many more years because of a person.

You know, I think of the New Testament when it asked, who did hinder thee? Disappointed in a person. It can happen. You know that people can really disappoint you.

They can hurt you. We all know that. And it literally helped to send Samuel into years of discouragement. I want you to notice, secondly, that he was not just disappointed in a person, but second, he was discouraged because of the people. He was discouraged because of the people. He said, well, preacher, you just said he was disappointed in a person, yeah.

But that one person was close to him and that really hurt him. But I'm going to tell you, this all was building. You see, in chapter 16, verse 1, this was a culmination of a number of things. And I want you to see these briefly this morning because you've got to understand all that was going on in Samuel's mind.

He was disappointed because of people. We got to go all the way back to 1 Samuel chapter 8. Verses are on the screen.

If you want to turn to it, that's fine. But I want you to look at this in verse 1, and it came to pass when Samuel was old that he made his sons judges over Israel. Now the name of his firstborn was Joel in the name of his second, Abiah. They were judges in Beersheba and his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre and took bribes and perverted judgment. Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together and came to Samuel unto Rama and sent unto him, behold, thou art old and thy sons walk not in thy ways. Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. You see, when the people rejected Samuel's sons and they wanted a new king, they were in a sense rejecting Samuel. In fact, they said this, you're old.

We need something better. And your sons don't walk in your ways, which means this, we don't think you've done a good job as a parent, and we don't think you're really doing a good job as a judge, so make us a king. Now I want you to look at verse six, it's on the screen, but the thing displeased Samuel when they said, give us a king to judge us, and Samuel prayed unto the Lord, and the Lord said unto Samuel, hearken unto the voice of the people, and all that they say unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. Samuel had given everything to these people for not much in return, and yet when they didn't think he measured up, they rejected him.

So this is all building. Samuel is not just disappointed now in what Saul has done. This whole mess came because the people rejected God, because they rejected me. And imagine this, I found this interesting, I don't find once that Samuel mourned over the fact that his sons were not able to follow him.

Do you get this? I don't see where Samuel mourned one bit that God didn't choose his sons to be judges. He got over that pretty quick, but he mourned for years over Saul.

Isn't that interesting? You see Saul would have never come about, Saul would have never failed if Saul hadn't had all this pressure on him, and it was too much pressure, and the reason Saul had too much pressure on him is because he had to become king because the people wanted a king, and the reason the people wanted a king because they didn't want to submit to God. So this whole mess started because of people. It had been brewing in Samuel for years. Number three, why was Samuel in mourning? Why did he mourn so much for, he was disappointed in the person. He was discouraged because of people. Notice third, he was disillusioned by unrealized plans.

You see it was all laid out. I mean, Samuel had spent all this time, Saul was going to be king, Saul was going to be a great king, and then Saul was literally going to give birth to a dynasty of kings, and that was the plan. Get in the Bible, find out. You'll find this out, that it was literally something that Samuel had to come tell Saul that God has not just rejected you, he's rejected your dynasty, your children. By the way, if you think about it, Saul's son, Jonathan, ended up becoming submissive and the best friend of the guy who would become the next king. You see, even though Jonathan was a good man, God had rejected Saul and any of his kin as king. I mean, literally it was unrealized plans.

This was all laid out. Samuel had spent a lifetime as a prophet working on this, cultivating it, teaching, training Saul, praying with Saul, calling upon God, watching him grow as a person, as an individual. I mean, literally Saul was the person that found, Samuel, excuse me, found Saul. Literally God said, listen, this day and tomorrow, they want a king.

This time tomorrow, I'm going to send somebody by, and the Bible said that Saul was taller than anybody in the land. I mean, he looked the part, I mean, he had everything. His dad was wealthy, and all these things, but plans change. You know, you and I oftentimes can find ourselves disillusioned by unrealized plans. This is how we thought it was going to work out, and it just hadn't worked out that way. I've seen people so mad and so discouraged and so defeated because of things that they wanted so bad, planned, they just knew this was going to happen. They always thought it would be this way and it didn't work out that way, and they have withdrawn themselves into their house, and they have spent years of mourning unrealized plans, just can't move on.

Number four, more I could say to that, by the way, and this is where it gets kind of the nitty gritty, and you know how I feel about this. Samuel was disappointed in a person. He was discouraged by people. He was disillusioned by unrealized plans, but fourth, he was dejected by his own performance. This is the worst. If there's anything that puts Daniel Haughtry into the state of mourning, it's when I've messed up. I mean, criticism of people, it's going to come, trust me it does, part of the makeup. But when you know and you're just disappointed in yourself, that's when it gets bad.

Now listen to me, I want you to get this. Samuel was the one that anointed Saul. Samuel advised Saul. Samuel trained Saul, look at me, for Saul to fail like he did, was in a way Samuel failing.

You know, not a lot, but more than you would probably realize, and not just around here, but in places, people from out of state, you know, we've gotten cards, letters from people that watch our services, states away and things, and sometimes you'll get calls and things and emails or whatever. You would not believe how many parents have withdrawn themselves, they're not real active in church anymore, they're come, they're faithful, they love the Lord, but they've just kind of raised their little white flag and just kind of given up their public ministry as Samuel did, because the failure of their children they've taken as their failure. If I had been a better parent, surely they wouldn't have done such and such. I mean, obviously, if I had done more, this wouldn't be the, I've watched a whole lot of people get into mourning because they're dejected by their own performance. Fifth, a whole lot more I can say to that too. I find here that Samuel mourned so much for Saul because he was disappointed by Saul, discouraged by people, disillusioned by unrealized plans, dejected by his own self, but notice last, he disagreed with God's preference. This all came crashing down in one instance. All these feelings, some that had been going on for years, it all hit at once. It is what I call the perfect storm of frustration. Have any of you ever had a perfect storm of frustration hit your life? It's like all of a sudden everybody has turned on you at once.

It's all of a sudden like everybody has let you down within a matter of a week. Am I the only heathen that's ever been through that? I want to show you this in chapter 15, the chapter before in verse 10. This is when Saul had begun to disobey God, but I want you to see what happened here.

In chapter 15 verse 10, verse will be on the screen. The Bible says, then came the word of the Lord unto Samuel saying, it repented me that I have set up Saul to be king, for he has turned back from following me and hath not performed my commandments. Listen to this, and it grieved Samuel, and he cried unto the Lord all night. Why was he crying to the Lord all night? He was trying to get God to change his mind.

No God, listen, I know he's done this, but listen, I believe he can do for some reason, Samuel, he was locked stock barrel into Saul. He wanted to see him succeed. He just knew this is what was supposed to happen. This is what he had planned.

He had spent his whole life. He'd spent hours and he'd spent time, and now God all of a sudden says, no, I've rejected him. He's done. We're going to move on.

And literally all night long, Samuel cries out to God, please don't do this. Change your mind. This isn't right.

Listen, I know what you think, but you're wrong. Has God ever been wrong? This one experience brought it all together. In one action, all these things that Samuel had been feeling, he's crushed by a person. This all started because these dumb people.

I had all these plans, and obviously if he's done this, then I've failed. And I don't know why God is doing this. Why can't God fix this? I know a lot of people that are in Rama sitting in the house mourning because of God's preferences.

Because God chose different than they would have. Interesting. Have you ever been there? Maybe not. Maybe this is a waste of time. But let me just let God work on my heart if you don't mind. Can I give you just a few points of perspective before we go today?

As we look at this story, God looks at Samuel in chapter 16, and he comes to him, look at me after years, after years of this. Point number one, I want you to write this down, don't ever forget it. Number one is this, people mess up. You know who people are?

You and me. People mess up. You can't hang your harp on a person. You can't invest everything you got in a person.

You can trust God, depend on God, and listen, you can take that to the bank. But people mess up. Number two, plans change. Plans change. You're looking at a guy who's had a lot of plans change over the years.

Not just about the fitness thing and all that stuff from last week, I'm just saying. Plans change. I look back at my life, some of the things that I just knew, this is the way it was going to be, didn't turn out at all like that, and God was right.

Plans change. Third point, it's okay to be disappointed. You know what I find? God never says, saw, how dare you more. I mean, Samuel, I get the two mixed up because the essay, oh my goodness, it's been a... God never looks at Samuel and says, Samuel, how dare you mourn for this.

How dare you take one minute wasting your time discouraged by what I've done and what I've chosen. God never reprimands Samuel for this affecting him. He doesn't reprimand Samuel because it disappointed him. Listen, you and I have a high priest that is touched with a feeling of our infirmities. He knows how we've been let down. He knows how we're hurt. He knows we've been disappointed in people. And guess what, people mess up and so do you.

So before you get back and you just judge, well, this person, they haven't reached out to me and they haven't done this and they haven't done that, listen, you've messed up too. God never said, Samuel, how I can't believe you. Here you are, a man of God, and here this is bothering you.

I can't believe that. God never got on him for that. In fact, God gave him a season to mourn.

Hey, I needed this. There was so much going on in my life, I'm just going to tell you personally, when my mom passed away, I just became pastor of this church. We had a son in a hospital. There's a lot of fish to fry right now, but I just don't think that I knew what the season of mourning would be when my dad died.

It hit me in a different way, wasn't prepared for it in ways that I don't even know how it's connected, but it has from health to a number of things. Listen, God gave Samuel a season for mourning. But there comes a time where you have to move on. It is okay to be disappointed. Fourthly, there comes a time to move on. How often do you and I mourn over circumstances or relationships or plans that have not worked out in our best interest, we think, and we almost don't feel like we can move forward. We have anointed something that didn't turn out. Did you hear me? We have anointed something that didn't turn out. Now I'm going somewhere with this as we close. So people mess up, plans change, it's okay to be disappointed.

There comes a time to move on. Listen to me. Next is this. God has a plan. He said, listen, Samuel fill your horn with oil and go. I have chosen me a king. I've got a plan.

I've got this worked out. You see, before the people chose their king for them. This time God says, I'm choosing my king for me. I don't know about you, but I have a feeling it's going to be a better choice. Last point is this, trust God's plan.

Okay. You got to see this. On the screen you're going to see 1 Samuel chapter 10 verse 1. This is all the way back where Samuel anoints Saul. Look at chapter 10 verse 1, then Samuel took a vial of oil and poured it on his head.

Now look at me. This is what we call a vial. This is actually oil that when there are those that the Bible teaches come and sickness or something, ask me to anoint them with oil. We'll have some elders of the church come.

Well, I'll anoint them with oil and pray over them. It's biblical. And this is a vial. It's kind of a little bit fancy. Actually I think got this at a Christian something, but there was a time where I just kept a little whatever.

This is a little vial. You'll open this up and there's anointing oil in here. And so the Bible says that when it came time, the people chose their king and they wanted the king. And so the Bible says, look at chapter 10 verse 1, then Samuel took a vial of oil and poured it upon his head and kissed him and said, is it not because the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain over his adherer. God bless you.