Better Not Call Saul, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. A new week of solid biblical teaching with pastor, author, and apologist J.D. Greer.

As always, I'm your host Molly Vidovitch. You know, most of us don't want to be poor in spirit. In fact, we don't even really know what that means.

But regardless, we'd rather be upper middle class in spirit, so to speak, so that we can do what we want, when we want, and how we want. After all, God is on our side, right? Today Pastor J.D. helps us understand why God actually blesses those who are poor in spirit and how a posture of humility leads to dependence, surrender, and ultimately peace and power. Remember, if you've missed any part of our brand new teaching series on the life of David, you can always catch up free of charge at jdgreer.com. Today we'll pick up the second half of the message we started last week, Better Not Call Saul.

Here's Pastor J.D. Y'all, surrender is one of those things that has to be total for it to mean anything, right? I mean, it's kind of how I think I surrendered my romantic life to Veronica when we got married.

That surrender, if it's not 100%, it doesn't matter at all, right? We've been married for next year, Lord willing, 23 years of marriage. And so for our 23rd anniversary, right, you know, she's excited about her gift and I put down in front of her a report card. And I was like, I just want you to know, sweetheart, 23 years, I have been 98.5% faithful to you. Now that's summa cum laude in anybody's school. It's you and me like, I mean, I've got a summa cum laude husband.

This is amazing. No, well, first of all, there's not a diamond attached to it, Brad Dingler, so it's not going to mean anything to her, but secondly, secondly, 98.5% faithful, what does that mean? That means what?

I mean, literally means out of a hundred girls I know, I've not been with 98.5% of them, but I have been with 1.5% with them. That's not summa cum laude faithfulness. That's entirely unfaithful because faithfulness is one of those things that's either all or nothing. Surrender is one of those things that you're either fully surrendered to him or you're not. He's either Lord of all or you're not Lord at all. So I would just ask you, is there any thought, any habit, any relationship, any sin, any lifestyle, any possession, any conviction over which you have not turned over complete control to God?

Please hear me, friend. I'm not talking about struggling with sin. We all struggle with sin. I struggle with compromise and disobedience every single day.

I'm not talking about that. I am talking about sitting here this morning with a level of resolve in your heart saying, yeah, I know that's against God's will. I know that's against God's will, but I just won't do it his way for right now.

That is different than struggling. That is a posture of rebellion. And that is like a sin of witchcraft. So if you stood this morning and with the rest of us, you kind of closed your eyes, you put your hands out and you sang, how great is our God, sing with me how great is our God. And it's just like Saul saying to Samuel, I have the commandment of the Lord. You cannot proclaim the worthiness of God with your lips if you are denying his authority with your life because you have rejected the word of the Lord.

He has also rejected you from being King. Saul said to Samuel, I have sinned for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Now that looks like repentance, doesn't it? Does that look like repentance to you?

It's not. Did you notice he's still blaming the people? And then look at what he says next. Now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may worship the Lord. This is not talking about let's have a private prayer time and then you play the guitar and I'll sing along some God songs with you.

This he's referring to the official Thanksgiving ceremony that Israel would hold at the end of a victorious battle. And Saul knows that if Samuel is not standing right there by his side, that it's going to look bad to people and people are going to wonder what's going wrong and Saul's going to lose face in front of everybody. In other words, Saul's main concern is still what he looks like in front of the people. Saul does not repent far from it.

He is less concerned about God and more concerned about his reputation. There is a point at which God will confront you over your sin. And the question is in that moment, some of you are going to be concerned only about what being caught does to your reputation. What's it look like to expose and confess this sin?

Let me ask, what would be more upsetting to you? For me to stand up here and read a list of your sins out to everybody so that everybody knows what's going on in your life or the fact that God himself knows it this morning. This is your moment to repent and you've got to get everybody else out of your mind.

You got to get everybody else out of your mind and just do business with God. Verse 26, and Samuel said to Saul, I will not return with you for you have rejected the word of the Lord and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. And Samuel turned to go away as Saul seized the skirt of his robe and it tore. And Samuel said to him, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you. Now y'all got to admit that's some great screenwriting right there.

Right? I mean, you know, Samuel turns away and Saul grabs his shirt and the shirt rips and Samuel turns and he looks at him and he says, he says, the Lord has torn the kingdom away from you like you tore my shirt just now and he's given it to a young shepherd boy who is better than you. Then Samuel said, bring here to me Agag, the king of the Amalekites and Agag came to him cheerfully saying, surely the bitterness of death has passed.

Agag is like, Hey, Hey, all right, all right. You've killed some people. I've killed some people. No big deal. No hard feelings. And Samuel said, as your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.

And Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal and that is why if I were casting the part of Samuel, I would save that role for Nicolas Cage because Samuel could only be played by an actor who went all in. Am I right? All right.

And nobody goes all in like St. Nick. All right. Here's what I think. Here's what I think we need to take away from this story. Okay. Just two things. Number one, prioritize character, not charisma. Y'all, if this story teaches us anything, it's that those things that usually catch our eye are not what served best in the long run.

Let me ask you this thought experiment. Why do you think, why do you think Israel was most attracted to flash and beauty and charisma? That's because they were looking for a king to make them proud and prosper them and protect them. But don't you remember that God was supposed to be those things? If God was those things for them, then what they most needed in a leader or a spouse or a job is something that helps you stay close to God.

Let me ask you this. Would you rather have a great job with great pay, great benefits, secure retirement and be out of fellowship with God or have a job with none of those things and know that you were in the center of God's will? Would you rather be married to the girl or a guy of your dreams and be out of fellowship with God or stay single and know that you're in fellowship with him? Your answer to that depends on what you see as your primary source of identity, security and happiness. If God is the source of those things, then the most important consideration in any decision is not what the pay is, what it feels like.

The most important consideration in any decision is, is this what God wants and is it going to keep me and fellowship with him? You know this, given time somebody's beauty and their charisma fade no matter how good it looks on the surface. One of the theories about the word sincere is that it comes from two Latin words sine, which means without, seri, which means wax. The idea was that when they made a pot or a sculpture or whatever defects were in it, cracks in the pot or you know, chips on the statue, they would take wax, melted wax, and they would cover in the defects and then paint over it. And you could never tell until you put the thing on the sun, then the wax would melt and all the imperfections would be revealed.

And so over time that word began to be applied. The theory goes to people's character, that somebody who was sincere in character is somebody without wax. Somebody who what they present on the outside is identical to what they are on the inside and they're not covering up a heart of compromise and rebellion. I will tell you as a very happily married man, when you age with somebody, what blesses you about them as you grow older is not their beauty, it is their character. All beauty fades and when that wax melts away, what remains is inward character. And so I'm just going to tell you, if you're choosing a spouse or an employee or a pastor or a king, you always prioritize character because character always composes the conclusion. It's not charisma that does that, it's character that does that.

Number two, godly character grows only in the soil of humility. Saul gives us a vision of how lives spiral out of control. You wonder, how did that person end up like that? How did that leader end up like that?

He started, she started so well. How did they end up like that? Saul gives you a roadmap. Pride leads to independence, which leads to compromise, which leads to turmoil.

We'll walk through that really quickly. Pride, like Saul, it all starts to be about you. You're not the little guy hiding in the closet anymore. It's now about your will, your agenda, your name, your abilities, your glory.

That leads to independence. You believe that you got things under control, that you are sufficient for the task. And so you don't obsess a lot about what God wants because you know what, I can make things work. I'm not as concerned where God wants me to go because I pretty much have the resource and the inward awesomeness to make it work, and as long as I got nine lives, I'll get up again.

If I get knocked down, I can make it work. You've lost what the Bible calls the fear of God. We see that word fear and we think it means terrified, and it's like, you should be terrified of God. And by the way, you should be terrified of God if you were on the wrong side of his wrath. But usually when the Bible says fear of God, that's not what it means.

When it says fear of God, it means fear like you were afraid to be without it. I think of it like this. When I lived in Indonesia, I went scuba diving, and since I've gone back to Indonesia over the years, I go scuba diving there. Now I need to make very clear, I'm not licensed as a scuba diver, but the rules are way different over there.

And so the last time I went, my instructor, and I put that in air quotes, my instructor took me like 50 feet down. Never been that deep before. And the thing is, when you go that deep, you can't, you know, just shoot up to the surface when you're done. Because little nitrogen bubbles would form in your blood and you get the bends and then you get sick or die.

Okay. So the problem is when you're that deep, if you haven't problem your oxygen, it's going to take you at least 15 minutes to get up to the surface. So the whole time I'm down there, I can't even enjoy anything that's, I'm supposed to be down there tormenting Nemo, but instead what I'm doing is I'm just watching this little dial because I got to make sure that I got at least 10 or 15 minutes of oxygen left so that I can surface. You would say in that moment I had a fear of oxygen.

It's not that I am terrified of oxygen, it's that I'm terrified to be without it. That's how we're supposed to feel about God. In any circumstance, I got to know that I'm in his will because I don't want to be cut off from him.

Pride leads you to independence, independence leads you to compromise. When you're not concerned about being cut off from God and his presence, you grow comfortable with compromise. Of course you don't want to make God angry, like you're not trying to tick him off so you attempt to offset your disobedience through what?

Through religious activity. It's like a carbon offset. You know how companies do a carbon offset?

They violate the environment over here so they plant a tree over here? You do a religious offset. You're like, I'm not going to obey God here so I'll just do something religious. I'm dating a non-believer but you know what, I'll bring him to church. I don't tithe my income, I tithe my time. God wants me to work on my marriage but instead what I'll do is I'll get really involved in the church. He wants me to go overseas, instead I'll open up my home for small group.

The only deal that God will ever make with you is his salvation, his presence, his power for your total surrender. Thanks for listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. If you want to know more about this ministry, visit us online at jdgreer.com. You know what, we appreciate you. It's an honor for us to be able to be a source of trusted spiritual encouragement for you each day. Did you know that these Summit Life broadcasts are only one of the ways you can keep up with Pastor J.D. 's ministry? There's emails, daily devotionals, blog posts, a podcast, our entire sermon library. Need I go on? But if you're like me, I spend a good amount of time on my phone, even when I'm busy.

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Greer right here on Summit Life. The fourth stage, pride leads to independence leads to compromise, turmoil. Saul in this chapter loses the presence of God. Chapter 16 says the Spirit of God departs from him. And you know what that leaves Saul feeling like? Super insecure. Now he can no longer depend on God to take care of him and to fight his battles for him. Now it's all on him. And that produces in Saul an anxiety and a jealousy that literally consumes him because that's what happens when it's all about you.

Everybody else is competition. Read these chapters and you will see Saul's life unravel. By the way, could I just say if some of you read these chapters to the lens of your life you might see this actually looks like my life. Saul becomes irrational. The slightest criticism, the slightest unfavorable comparison with somebody else sends Saul into a violent rage. Anybody, anybody feels like a challenge to his self-worth or self-value so he can't stand to lose. Are you that way?

Are you the kind of person that can't stand to lose? David's playing the harp on Saul's court. And Saul looks at him and says, man, everybody likes David more than me. And he starts to dwell on that and in rage and jealousy start to consume him. So he takes a javelin and tries to pin David to the wall.

Saul's gonna spend the last decade of his life traipsing around the wilderness trying to hunt down David because he's jealous and he thinks people like David more than him and Saul's lost his relevance and David's gonna be the new king. Are you the kind of person who really struggles with jealousy toward others? Are you consumed with worry and anxiety about the future? Do you resent other people for their successes and say, God, why not me? Or again, are you the kind of person who just hates to lose?

Look, I'm not your psychologist, but you pull back the layers and I guarantee you what you'll probably find is you'll find a heart that's not fully surrendered to God and not fully convinced that God is gonna supply everything you need to do what he tells you to do. I think the greatest side benefit, y'all, of being fully surrendered to God, the greatest side benefit, it's just the peace and the security that comes from knowing the future doesn't rest on my shoulders. I don't have to make it all work out. I don't have to provide a plan for everything, I don't have to win everything. I don't have to be sufficient, he's sufficient. I don't care if other people outperform me, it's not about my glory anymore, it's about his glory.

It's not devastating if other people don't recognize my contribution and they get praised and I get left out because my accolade is just hearing, well done, good and faithful servant one day from the only one whose opinion really matters. I don't have to worry about providing for my future, I'm his servant, which means my God shall supply all my need. Surrender leads to peace, independence leads to turmoil.

I love how one author said it, you are afraid to surrender because you don't want to lose control, but you never had control, all you had was anxiety. It is so sweet to trust in Jesus, just to take him at his word, just to rest upon his promise, just to know, thus says the Lord. Y'all throughout the Bible, the one virtue that leads to all the other virtues is humility. That's why Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit. There's the kingdom of God.

Now that's so poetic, isn't it? Oh, poor in spirit. You don't want to be poor in spirit, I spent all my life trying to become anything but poor in the spirit. You ever really been poor?

Maybe a handful of you, some of you college students are poor right now. When you're really, really poor, you have no mobility. You can't do anything because you always got to be tethered to the money giver, right? So I can't be, I can't go do what I want to do and be where I want to be because I got to be at a place where I have money. When you're poor in the spirit, you are afraid of ever being separated from God because you don't have the resources to do anything. I've never wanted to be poor in spirit. I've always wanted to be middle class in spirit, upper middle class in spirit.

That's what I've always desired to be. When you think about it, think about how God created humanity. Think back to the original creations. Didn't he create us with a sense of like pathetic neediness? Think about the first story in the Bible. God creates everything and God declares over all that it is good, right? Except for one thing. It's not good that man should be alone. So how does, how are we going to deal with that problem? You ever look at how God does it?

It's very creative. He says, all right, it's not good that man should be alone. So the first thing he does is create Adam a wife. Is that right?

It's false. First thing he does is I want you to name all the animals. What's this got to do with me and being alone?

You'll see. So in come the animals two by two, the hippopotamus and the kangaroo and Adam names them all. And he says, well, for Mr. Giraffe, there's a Mrs. Giraffe and for Mr. Aardvark, there's a Mrs. Aardvark and I'm not really attracted to either of them. So there is no Mrs. Adam. And God says, go, go, go. That's all I want you to see.

It's the whole animal naming thing. That's all what it was about. Now go to sleep. Puts Adam to sleep. Are you ever in a more helpless, dependent posture than when you are asleep?

No. He showed Adam he had a problem he could not deal with. Then he made him go to sleep, the most helpless posture, and then he awakes and behold, there is woman. By the way, ladies, first time you meet man in the Bible, he is just woken up from a nap and he is recovering from surgery. Talk about a needy dude, okay?

That is the whole picture that you need to be prepared to walk into. The whole creation was, you're needy. Depend on me.

What was the first sin? You're not needy. God doesn't want you to do this because he knows if you do this, you'll be like him. And then you can be like him and then you won't be so needy. You won't be so needy. Blessed are the poor in spirit.

It's only theirs. That's the kingdom of God. The only thing you need with God is really a sense of need. See, when you sense your need, you're going to surrender yourself to him. It's not even going to be hard.

No conditions, no caveats, no compromises. Y'all, a king fully dependent on God is what God wanted to give him. The Saul is the opposite of that, wasn't he?

And that caused Israel a lot of heartache. But what Saul did is set them up for a different kind of king. A king that was not that impressive. He was a little runt kid, the least of seven sons, the one that his dad literally forgot about.

Oh yeah, I got one more. That guy comes in dirty, grimy, not impressive, but he was surrendered to God and he was humble and he would become a man after God's own heart. See, that sense of dependence gave that little shepherd boy access to a power that could knock a giant down. Power that Saul never knew anything about. But you know that David is not the primary king that God's trying to prepare them for. When Jesus came, he was even less physically impressive than David was. He had no might, no money, no political clout, no home, no army, wasn't even good with a slingshot as far as we know.

He didn't stand head and shoulder above anybody in any way. Isaiah says that there was literally no form or comeliness that we should desire him. Yet he was fully dependent on God. In one sense, Jesus was the neediest person ever to live. That sounds almost sacrilegious to you, doesn't it? Jesus was the neediest person ever to walk the face of the earth.

Don't take my word for it, it's what he said. I won't do anything except what I see the Father doing. That's why he spent so much time in prayer, because he was scared to do something that was outside of what God wanted him to do. That's why before he chose a single disciple, he spent all night in prayer. When's the last time you spent all night in prayer before a decision you were going to make?

I submit to you, Jesus is needier than you. He needed to pray all night before a decision because he was so desperate to know what God wanted. And that weakness in himself and strength in God gave him access to the power by which he raised from the dead. That gave him a power to overcome and be your savior. He was going to suffer your sin and die in your place. He was going to take all the areas of compromise where you, like Saul, had shown rebellion and he was going to die for them. He overcame not just his temptation to sin, he overcame your actual sin. Now he offers you that forgiveness, he offers you that power, but you only get it one way. By doing what he did, by admitting that you have no hope except for his grace, you have no power except for his life, and then surrendering yourself to him without caveat, without condition, and without compromise. There's only two categories in here, those who are fully surrendered to Jesus and those who are walking in rebellion to him. I hope you've been enjoying this brand new teaching series called The Life of David.

It's taken some backstory to get the whole picture, but tomorrow we'll cover the story of how the prophet Samuel anointed David as the future king of Israel when he was just a boy. I mentioned this earlier, but don't forget that if you've missed any part of this series, you can always catch up free of charge at jdgrier.com. While you're on our website, you'll be able to access a host of gospel-centered resources that we've made available to you. You'll also be able to donate to support this ministry or join us as a monthly gospel partner. I want to thank all of you who give, and if you've never considered partnering with us financially, I'd like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining with us. Each day, people around the world hear the gospel preached because of this ministry, and it's only possible because of our generous donors. To say thank you, we give away a premium resource each month, and this month we're sending you an eight-week Bible study through The Life of King David, highlighting passages from 2 Samuel and giving you application and prayer points along the way. To give, call us now at 866-335-5220.

That's 866-335-5220, or you can give online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vedovitch. Tomorrow, we'll see the first steps toward David becoming Israel's king, so be sure to join us. We'll see you Tuesday for Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.