SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have this on the screen. But chapter 15, verse 14. So leading up to this, Saul did not kill all the Amalekites like he should. God told him to wipe out the entire nation, kill all the animals, kill the king, kill everybody. Saul did not kill the king, and he did not kill the lambs and the oxen and the all of these things that he uh decided he wasn't going to obey God in. So Samuel said in verse 14, what then is this bleeding of sheep in my ears and the lowering of the oxen which I hear? Samuel says, if you obeyed God, Saul, then why do I hear a sheep in my ear? Why is there a sheep in the distance? And here's what Saul says. Look very carefully at the way he words this. Verse 15. Y'all everybody there? Y'all ready? It says, And Saul said what? That's very important. Now I just want to stop right there. Saul said, they. He didn't say I. He didn't say me. Chapter 15, verse 15. And Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites. And look, look what he said. He goes on. For who? The people. Not Saul, not me. The people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God. And the rest, what we have utterly destroyed. What is Saul doing here? He's creating a fence of who's right and who's wrong, and he's placing himself on the right side and everybody else on the wrong side. He's saying, I know you told us to take the king and kill him and the animals and everything. They didn't do that, but I utterly destroyed everyone else. He's saying, look at me, God, I obeyed. Samuel, I obeyed. I did my part. And the people, the people did not obey you. And then we keep on going. It says, Then Samuel said to Saul, I like how Samuel's just straight out, straight up, blunt. Be quiet. Everybody won't tell somebody that once in a while? Basically, this is a this is a nice way of just saying, shut up. Shut up, you're lying. He says in verse 16, Samuel says to Saul, Be quiet, and I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night. And he said to him, Speak on. So Samuel said, When you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel? And did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel? Now the Lord sent you on a mission. And he said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed. Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil and do evil in the sight of the Lord? And here in verse number 20. And Samuel said to Saul, or Saul said to Samuel, but look what he says again. But I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. He just can't admit it, can he? He's shifting the blame. But I have obeyed the voice of the Lord and gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me and brought back Agag, the king of Amalek Amalek. I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites or the Amalekites. And look at verse 21. But what? The people, the people took the plunder, the sheep, the oxen, the best of things which should have been utterly destroyed to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal. Samuel, Saul is constantly saying, I'm I'm not, you know, I didn't disobey you. The people did. They pressured me. They said this. They took the sheep. He's not willing as the leader to take any of the blame. And by the way, that's where blame always lies on leadership. He was the one in control. He's the one that said what goes. He's the king. They all have to obey him. But Saul said, the people, the people, the people, I utterly destroyed. I did this. I does anybody know anyone? I'm not even gonna ask you all that. Do we ever do that in our own life? We try to make ourselves look good, as good as possible, place ourselves in the best light, shift as much as we can little things here and there to make them look bad and us look good so we can feel good about our sin. Saul shifted blame. And this is the oldest tactic when you don't own up to sin. You can go all the way back to the garden, right? What happened in the Garden of Eden? Satan deceived Eve, and she ate of the fruit, and then Adam ate, and God went and found them. He said, What's going on? And and Adam said, This, this woman that you gave me. What did Adam successfully do in that one sentence? He placed the blame on God and Eve all in one sentence. Anybody, any men ever say that one something? This woman, God, that you gave me. This, I never say that, by the way. Yeah. Brittany's looking at me like, you better, you better stop right there. This woman that you gave me, Adam did not want to own up and say, I messed up. I sinned against a holy God, against you. You gave me everything, and I wanted one thing that I couldn't have. I sinned. He didn't own up to it, he shifted the blame. Why? Because pride defends sin instead of confessing it. And in humility, we have to hang our heads in humility and say, God, I know I messed up and I'm sorry. By the way, that would help not only your relationship with God, but that would help every other relationship in your life. Marriages, husbands, wives. You may be one apology away from reconciliation. I believe there's very few things in life that you can't fix with humility in a conversation. An honest conversation where you own up to your part in it. Stop pointing the finger at what they did. Everybody's wrong in some way. Let's just own up to what we did and stop shifting the blame. Stop, stop. Hold on, that siren's messing me up. All right, it's gone. We got to, in humility, own up to sin, confess it, repent of it, and God will cleanse us of it. So once pride has convinced us we're not really wrong and our sin's not serious, there's something else that happens. We do not feel the godly conviction over sin like we should. The godly sorrow. Saul was so focused on defending his sin and setting himself, maybe deceiving his own mind into thinking he's not as sinful as he really was, that he blocked out the voice of God and was not feeling and experiencing the conviction that he should have for what he did. So that leads me to my third warning that we have. Pride fears consequences more than conviction. Pride fears consequences more than conviction. One of the, I think I said this last week, one of the greatest problems we have in Christianity today is that there is so little conviction of sin. And I believe that it comes from an irreverence of his holiness. The irreverence for his holiness has led to an indifference to our sinfulness. And we don't look at God and see him as Isaiah saw him, where the angels chanted, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, and Isaiah fell on his face and said, I am a man of unclean lips, and I live amongst people that are unclean. When you get a glimpse and an understanding of the holiness of God, it reveals the sinfulness of self. But we're so busy comparing ourselves with culture instead of Christ, with society instead of the Savior, and with the world instead of the word. And it results in an absence of conviction in our heart. Where we look, look, it ain't hard to find somebody that you can be better than and feel better than. Well, God, I'm not doing that. So but our standard is not any morality at any given time in the world that we live in. Our standard is Jesus and holiness. And we should, it should break our hearts when we grieve and quench the Spirit of God. But it doesn't bother us like it should because our heart becomes calloused, it becomes hardened, and it becomes it can become dull. And we can become not as sensitive to the Holy Spirit, to the voice of God, like we should be. And every single one of us, like I said, suffer from this disease, this heart problem, where we can come become calloused to the conviction of God. And the result is that there's no brokenness. And we see that in Saul. In verse 13, you don't have to turn there and put it on the screen or anything, but uh verse 13, then Samuel went to Saul, and Saul said to him, he said, This, Blessed are you of the Lord, I have performed the commandment of the Lord. What's going on with Saul right here? He disobeyed God. He sinned by not following what God told him to do. And when Samuel walked up, he said, How you doing, Samuel? He might give him a fist bump. How you doing, Samuel? I've obeyed everything God told me. There was no brokenness over sin. He just disobeyed the creator, the one that made him king. And it did not bother him. Does anybody else come to a point in life sometimes where your sin does not bother you like it should? That's why we're doing this study about the heart. Because it all comes back to the heart. He didn't think it was that big a deal, but when you look at what God said through Samuel, you see that sin is always a big deal to God. Look what he says. Let's look at verse number 19, and then we're gonna jump down to verse 22. Why then, Samuel says, Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil and look and do evil in the sight of the Lord? This isn't just a no big deal situation. He did evil in the sight of the Lord. And then Samuel goes on in verse 22. He says, Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to heed than the fat of rams for listen to this, verse 23. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. And stubbornness is as the iniquity, as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king. God was serious about Saul's sin. What was his two main sins? Probably two sins that we don't take very seriously. Rebellion and stubbornness. If you were making a list of the greatest sins, rebellion and stubbornness might not make the top of the list, but God said, rebellion is as witchcraft and stubbornness is as an idolatry and iniquity. He's saying this is a big deal. You can't gloss over, you can't act like it's no big deal. His sin, his stubbornness, not willing to listen to God, not you know, just doing his own thing, going his own way, not following the word of God. Then he says this to obey is better than to sacrifice. What a powerful statement. To obey is better than to sacrifice. Now, what does that mean? I believe it speaks of uh genuine trust and surrender is better than ritual to make up for a willful disobedience. Religion and rituals to make up for willful disobedience. It's a whole lot better to obey God in the very beginning than to sin and then keep asking for forgiveness over and over. Saul was going through a pattern here where he was not listening to God, he was doing his own way, he was stubborn, he was not following God, and he would sin and then just expect it to all be back to normal because he, you know, offer a sacrifice, it'll be okay. Look, if we're not careful, we can go through a pattern of behavior where we take advantage of God's grace and mercy. Where we say, okay, I messed up, I sinned, I did wrong, but I know God will forgive me, and we ask for his forgiveness and we go right back to doing the same thing, and it's a never-ending cycle. Saul is saying, or Samuel's saying, giving your heart to him, surrendering to him, obeying him is better than doing wrong and then just asking for forgiveness later. And that's what we have to remember. And let me just say this as a side note. I'm not talking about if you're here and you're struggling with an addiction that you are genuinely trying to break, if you're struggling with something and God knows that you're you're trying your best to be set free from it. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about you casually just taking advantage of God's grace and mercy, knowing that he will forgive you. That's not true repentance. That's not true conviction. God wants you to give your heart to him. Give your life to him completely. It's not about just doing wrong and then coming back to church and you know going through the motions of religion. It's about giving your life to him, making up your mind that you are going to surrender your heart and really repenting. Hey, listen, regret is not always repentance. Regret does not always lead to repentance. Repentance is a change of heart that leads to a change in direction. It means that, okay, yeah, I messed up, but I'm turning this over to him now, and I am heading a different direction. It's not going back and forth. It's it's a change in heart that leads to a change in direction. And it comes through real conviction. Now look, I want to I want to kind of back up here. I think we do not have conviction like we should, because we are not looking to Jesus like we should. Say, what do you mean by that? I believe sometimes, and I'll just say for myself, sometimes we focus too much on hating the sin instead of loving the Savior. And we and we want to change and we try to change and we keep messing up, but but but we don't feel the conviction drawing us back like we should because we're not focusing on Jesus like we should. If you look at the cross and what Jesus did for you and you and you focus on how he was wounded for your transgressions, he was bruised for your iniquities. So you know, it pleased the Lord to bruise him. When you focus on the cross, it should break your heart. You shouldn't be comfortable living in the sin that Jesus died for. We shouldn't be comfortable when that sin is what nailed him to the cross. It should bring conviction that we broke the Father's heart. And I'm not saying this to bring you to a point of guilt, but a point of conviction that the Holy Spirit would work in your heart, not to condemn you, but to cleanse you. You will repent and turn from it because God has so much better. But when we look at Jesus and what he did for us on the cross, how can we be comfortable straddling the fence? Right? To obey is better than to sacrifice. It makes me think of what David said in Psalms 51. David, contrasting Saul with David, David said this, Psalms 51, verse 16, for you do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it. You do not delight in burnt offerings. And then David says this the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. These, O God, you will not despise. What did David realize? He realized that what God really wants is a brokenness over sin.

unknown 17:48

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

That's what David had that Saul was lacking. He wasn't broken over his sin. He wasn't upset because of the conviction in his heart. He was upset because of the consequences he would face. I want you to look at verse number 24. Chapter 15. Look at verse 24. It says, Then Saul said to Samuel. Everybody there? Verse 24? Look what he says. I have sinned. For I transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words. That's good, right? He's admitting that he sinned. And if he would have just stopped there, it might have been okay. But then what did he say? Because I feared the people. He's going back to the people. He cannot get his mind off the people. I fear the people and obeyed their voice. Saul finally admits and confesses. But it says, then, only after then, what happened before the then, Samuel laid out the consequences. And Saul was more worried about the consequences of not being king than the conviction that he sinned against God. He wasn't upset because of the conviction in his heart. He was upset because of the consequences he would face. Anybody has any kids in here, you kind of can relate to that, right? They're not upset until you give them some consequences. You take their phone and then they're willing to change and do whatever you want to do, right? You give some punishment, right? And then it changes. It was not true conviction, it wasn't true confession, it wasn't true repentance. How do we know? Because he's still blaming others and he's not taking full weight of the wrong. It says, for godly sorrow produces repentance, leading to salvation, not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world produces death. There's two different types of sorrow here there's godly sorrow and there's worldly sorrow. One leads to repentance unto salvation, the other leads to death. Godly conviction, true conviction, should always lead you back to Jesus. Worldly sorrow may have regret, it may have tears. But look, sometimes your tears are not a result of conviction, but of consequences that you face. I'll think of, we're contrasting David and Saul here, but I think about another good contrast in the New Testament of Peter and Judas. They both sinned against God, they both betrayed Jesus. Judas did it for 30 shekels of silver, and Peter did it for free. Judas betrayed him, Peter denied him, but Judas's sorrow was not a godly sorrow, it was a worldly sorrow that led him to return the money but not run to Christ. Peter's conviction, the Bible says he wept bitterly and then he ran to Jesus. He jumped out of the boat of the Sea of Galilee and swam to Jesus, right? His brokenness over his sin led him to the Savior. And we see the same thing in contrasting David and Saul. Saul's never repented because he never had conviction that led him back to God. Consequences can change your behavior, but conviction changes your heart. And that's what it comes down to, right? The heart. And I'm gonna give you one more this morning and we're gonna close. Number four. Pride protects reputation more than relationships. It protects reputation more than relationships. Look, look at verse number twenty five. So Paul admitted that he sinned. He confessed that he sinned. I feared the people. He's still making excuses, kind of. Then he says this, verse 25, now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may worship the Lord. So what is Saul saying here? He's saying, okay, now that that's out the way, let's just get back to the way things were. Forgive my sin, and let's just get back to me being king and everything being okay. Let's just get back to normal. And look what he says in verse 26. But 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 as Samuel turned around to go away, Saul seized the edge of his robe and it tore. So Samuel said to him, The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you. And also the strength of Israel will not lie nor relent, for he is not a man that should relent. And then look what Saul says here in verse 30. Then he said, I have sinned. Now look, yet honor me now, please, before the elders of my people and before Israel, and return with me that I may worship the Lord your God. You know why how we know that Saul's repentance wasn't genuine? Because he's still just worried about his reputation. It's all about his image and not his integrity. It's all about his appearance and not his obedience. He wanted Samuel to return with him to the people so that everyone can see that him and Samuel are good and the kingdom's alright and he's still king and everything is wonderful. You know what Saul wanted to do? He wanted to sweep everything under the rug and act like it was no big deal to keep his appearances up because he was more worried about what people thought about him than what God knew about him. I told y'all at the beginning of this, this wasn't gonna feel good. It's all about the image, it's all about everybody's seeing how great Saul is. Because he feared the opinion of people more than being obedient to God. If you keep reading, Samuel did not care about his reputation. Let's just read it. How about it? How about we just read it? How about we get real in late church? The Bible says, where we left off? 30. Look at verse 31. I don't think we have on the screen. So Samuel turned back after Saul, and Saul worshiped the Lord. Then Samuel said, Bring Agag, king of the Amalekites, here to me. This is the one that Saul was supposed to kill. So Agag came to him cautiously, and Agag said, Surely the bitterness of death is past. But Samuel said, As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women, and Samuel hacked Agag in pieces before the Lord and Gilgal. You didn't hear that in your Sunday school lesson, did you? Samuel cared more about obeying God than he cared about what people thought about him. And he hacked Agag in pieces. He killed King Agag because Agag was not supposed to live. But we are so worried about what people think about us, uh, so worried about our reputation. Sin gets overlooked, it gets excused, and it's not dealed with like it should be. It gets swept under the rug, hid in the closet, all the while it's slowly killing you from the inside out. Because the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. And God wants surrender to the heart. People will go to great lengths to protect an image and a reputation. We'll go on for social media and make a perfect picture world and family and marriage to protect an image. When the real truth is that things may be falling apart. We become professional fakers where we come, where our world is falling apart, but as soon as we step out of the vehicle in the parking lot, we put on that big Christian smile and act like everything's okay, shaking hands, hugging necks, kissing babies, acting like our world is wonderful. Because we want to protect an image and not be real. Look, let me just say this while I'm here. We don't care if you're broken. We're broken too. We're just broken people trying to help broken people, pointing them to the one that will heal and restore truly and fully. I heard someone say this. Your reputation is who people believe you are. And your character is who God knows you are. We need to be focusing on developing our character, not just building our reputation. Because God is way more interested in our heart than our reputation, in our image. In fact, the Bible says Jesus, you know, let this mind be in Christ, which is also in you. Philippians 2, uh, he made of himself of no reputation. Took upon him the form of a man, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Then God hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord. If the King of the universe came down and he was not focused on his reputation, he was just focusing on pleasing the Father. I think that's a good example for all of us. As we have our worship team come forward this morning. If we're going to be people after God's own heart, if we're gonna be men and women after God's own heart, then listen, we have to constantly be pursuing God's heart. We have to guard our heart, we have to surrender our heart, we have to allow him to search our heart, expose our heart, lay it open on the table and let him do some heart surgery. Get real, get honest. Let him expose it, be aware of it, be honest about it, and repent of it and change it. It all comes down to the heart. Everyone in here, you have a physical heart, but you have a spiritual, emotional, the mind, the body, the emotions, the will. And that's what God is wanting to do a work in this morning, and then everything else flows out of that. Guard your heart above all things, for out of it flow the issues of life. Right? A good prayer that I want us to memorize, and a good psalm, good thing to pray, good prayer to pray, ironically written by David is Psalms 139, 23, and 24. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties. See if there's any wicked way in me, and then lead me in the way everlasting. I want you to write that down. I want you to pray that. I want you to remember that, memorize it, and I want you to be honest when you pray it. If you're honest, listen, that's what we call one of them dangerous prayers. Because God will reveal some things in your life. He will show you some areas that maybe are not surrendered to him like they should be. Some sin thrown in the corner, some things under the rug, some things you're trying to avoid and you're trying to excuse. He will reveal what is keeping you from drawing closer to him. Can we all say this together? Let's repeat this together. One, two, three. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties and see if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. I want everyone to bow your heads. I want you to really let that sink in. We all want to identify with David, but we're probably a lot more like Saul than we like to admit. God is not looking for perfect people. David wasn't perfect. He's looking for surrendered hearts. Because the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. And he's placing his hand, his finger, pointing out some things in your life right now. And the question is, is what are you gonna do about it? Are you gonna leave it there? Are you gonna try to ignore it? Are you gonna let God do a deep work within your heart? Are you gonna let him lead you in the way everlasting? Are you gonna let him expose things? Are you gonna truly repent? Are you gonna continue like Saul, stubborn and unrepentant? Saul did not decide one day he was just gonna ruin his entire life. It happened one day at a time where he did not surrender his heart to God. If you're here this morning and you've never given your heart to Jesus in the first place, he died for you. He's hung on the cross to purchase you a new heart, to give you a new life. The Bible says that if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. Ezekiel, he says that I will give you a new heart, a heart of flesh. He didn't just come to forgive sinful actions, he came to transform hearts and lives. Not just to clean you up from the outside, but from the inside. Will you allow him to do a work in your heart today? And as we have a song of invitation, I want to open this invitation up, this altar up. If you need prayer, maybe you just need to spend some time by yourself in your seat or down front by this stage in prayer, asking God to reveal things, to break you over sin, to give you uh just a powerful weight of conviction where he's calling you to change. Whatever the Lord is working in your heart right now, let him do it. If you're here and you need prayer, you need someone to speak with you, would you come and let us pray with you? If you're here and you haven't trusted in Jesus as your Savior, He's calling you. With the heart man believes unto righteousness. Will you give him, surrender your heart to him today? I want to pray for us and we're open this invitation up. Father, we love you. Pray for every person here this morning. The ones that are broken, the ones that are shattered, the ones that are suffering, the ones that are hurting, the ones that are struggling with sin. God, the ones that are far from you, the ones that you're drawing near, the hearts in here today, I pray that you will do a powerful, eternal, life-changing work in each one of us, oh God. The one, maybe there's one here today that's not truly a Christian, that's never truly given their life to you. They've played the game of religion, but they've never surrendered their life to you. God, I pray that the conviction of the Holy Spirit would be so strong in their life right now. You would draw them. The broken hearts, broken relationships, the broken lives, we pray you would restore. In Jesus' name. Amen. Let's continue to pray. If you need prayer, if you need to come spend some time in prayer at this altar, would you mind the Lord this morning?