Well, good morning, church. If you have your Bibles, I want to invite you to turn with me to 2 Samuel 1. 2 Samuel 1. We're going to read verses 17 to 19 from 2 Samuel 1 this morning. It's a great privilege for me to be here with you this morning. If you're wondering who I am, I am technically a new pastor here at Canova, but I've been brought on board to work with Pastor Steve over at the Ashland campus. And so I am new on the job. And I'm glad to be here with you this morning. I'm particularly glad you guys are here. This past Sunday was my very first Sunday here. We just moved last week. And on Monday, Pastor Steve sent me away to Atlanta. And then right when I get back from Atlanta, he leaves and goes off to the beach. So I don't know if he does that to all the new people or if it's just something about me that he's trying to avoid. Maybe he's having a little buyer's remorse or something and he's trying to cure it at the beach. I don't know. So I'm glad you guys are here. I can't say I'm mad at him. It's minus 500 degrees. That's the unofficial official temperature outside. So if I was him, I'd go to the beach as well. Uh, but I'm glad you guys are here. And so I'm going to give you the gift this morning of a short sermon. Uh, I've got to go and preach at the Ashton campus as well and then be back here for the second service. Uh, but I really just want to give you guys a gift. It doesn't have anything to do with the travel. So I'm going to give you a short sermon this morning. though by the time I'm done you might not feel like it was a gift or short but I can promise you at least it is a short sermon. So let's pray for the Lord's mercy upon us this morning and we'll jump in. Our Father and our God we come to you and we confess we are so prone to wander Father, we confess we so often find more satisfaction in the world than we find in which you are for us in Jesus. Father, we need your grace. We need your spirit to put to death what remains that is earthly in us and to put on Christ so that we can strip off every weight and every sin and run with freedom after Christ. Lord, I pray you'll teach us even this morning again what it means to repent, what it means to be in a relationship with you, what it means to be satisfied in all that you are for us. So magnify yourself among us this morning. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. We hear the voice of the Lord this morning from 2 Samuel 1. And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and Jonathan his son. And he said, it should be taught to the people of Judah. Behold, it is written in the book of Yashar. He said, your glory, O Israel, is slain on your high places. How the mighty have fallen. How the mighty have fallen. This is a terrifying and tragic lamentation from David over Saul, who has just died. His death is being recounted now for us a second time, followed by this lament. the mighty have fallen. And as I've studied these opening chapters of 2 Samuel over this past week, I've just been struck by this tragic downfall of Saul and this lament of David, and even more so after Pastor Steve's message last week. You'll recall last week he He walked us through the life of David and he showed us how it was the choices that David made in the past that led him to this present where he's now ascending to the throne of all of Israel. And he used that to show us the significance of our choices, right? How God has blessed this church, but we're not reaping the benefit of choices we made in 2016, but choices we made years ago. and how the choices we make in the present are going to affect what our future looks like. And of course, in the midst of that, he gave us this brief but significant warning that we might not be flourishing in the future like we are in the present. And he pointed us to a church not too far from here, that at one time was a mighty church and is now a lament, how the mighty have fallen." And so I want to kind of piggyback off of that warning and that sermon, right? So just as we saw how David, by God's grace, made a whole series of good and wise decisions that took him to the throne, Saul, through a whole series of bad decisions and rebellion against God, led him to this tragic downfall of he and his entire family. kingdom that ends in this lament, how the mighty have fallen. And that could be us. That could be you. So we need to see how Saul, who started out with so much promise and so much hope and so much potential, became this tragic and terrifying lamentation. Much of the books of Samuel, which were originally one book, are concerned with this antithesis between Saul and David and the radically different outcomes of their lives and their kingdoms. And we need to learn from both of them. And so the question before us this morning then is, how do we make shipwreck of our lives. That's probably not a question we ask ourselves too often, but it's an important question we need to think about. How do we make shipwreck of our lives? And Saul is a paradigm for us of how you can make a shipwreck of your life. And I want you to see three things from Saul's life that serve as warnings to us of how you can make a shipwreck of your life. So the first warning, first thing to see from Saul is that religion without a relationship will lead to destruction. Religion without a relationship will lead to destruction. This is a serious warning for us, right? We're in the Bible belt. Everybody in the Bible Belt is a religious person. Almost everybody in the Bible Belt can tell you when they walked an aisle, when they got saved, when they were baptized, even though they can't tell you the last time they stepped foot in a church. They'll tell you they're religious people. They will confess with their lips that they love Jesus, but their lives will look radically different. This is a serious warning when we live in that culture. That is our culture, and it influences us. And it impacts us in ways we may not even realize. Religion without a relationship will lead to destruction. Saul was a religious man. He kept up religious practices without ever knowing God rightly and truly. And so he becomes a lament at the end of his life how the mighty have fallen. So he's this lament, how the mighty have fallen in spite of the fact he's got a long and impressive list of religious accomplishments, right? He fought valiantly against the enemies of the people of God. He offered sacrifices regularly to God. He wiped out all of the witches and the sorcerers from the land. He even prayed earnestly to God. Saul had A religious resume, as good as anyone, but there was a problem. He did not know God rightly. You see, there were two essential elements to knowing God that were constantly missing from Saul's life. Two elements that are constantly missing from Saul's life that lead to this tragic statement how the mighty have fallen. And we need to ask ourselves this morning, are these missing from our life? Are these missing from our life? First off, Saul lacked trust in God. He lacked trust in God. Over and over in the life of Saul, we see him being given opportunities to obey. And over and over again, he rejects the Word of God. He rejects obedience. He chooses his own path, even as he claims with his own lips that he is trusting and obeying God. And so he chooses rebellion over reliance. And the chronicler says of Saul in 1 Chronicles 10, 13, and 14, He did not inquire of the Lord. He did not obey the word of the Lord. He did not trust the Lord. And so he becomes a lament. He wanted to go his own way. It's just the opposite of what we see in David, right? In chapter 2, verse 1, what do we see David doing? He's there inquiring of the Lord. He's trusting the Lord. He's trusting what God has promised to do for him. And so we constantly see that in Saul's life is that he doesn't want God. Instead, he wants to use God to build his own kingdom. God was nothing more to Saul than a means to get something beyond God. This is the exact opposite of David. These opening chapters, we see David subverting the ways of the world. We see him refusing to grasp for power the way the world does. We see him refusing to take revenge. We see him refusing to pervert justice for his own gain. We see him trusting God to do for him what God promised to do for him. And when we see when David does sin, and he does sin mightily, He is on his face before God in true repentance, trusting in God. He desires God. And this leads us to the second thing we see missing from Saul's life, and it's perhaps the most important element to knowing God. Saul lacked trust in God because he was not satisfied in God. God was not his satisfaction. God was not his joy. God was not his treasure. If you are going to know God, we must be satisfied in God. But God simply was not enough for Saul. God's portion was not enough for Saul. So when God says that He must devote all of the Amalekites to destruction, what does He do? He plunders their wealth. He plunders the good things from the Amalekites to keep for Himself. God's portion was not enough. When God does not respond to him, what does he do? He chooses his own way. When David is anointed and the people begin to praise David, what does Saul do? It's not enough for him to be the Lord's anointed. It's not enough for him to be king of Israel if he's going to have to share the praise with David. God was not enough for Saul. Is He enough for you? Are His promises enough for you? Is the hope of flourishing that's going to come, not necessarily in this life now, but in a new creation to come, Is that enough for you to patiently endure suffering now? Or are you going to go your own way? Are you going to try to build your own kingdom? Trust in God, satisfaction in God are two indispensable elements to knowing God truly. If you are not satisfied in all that God is for us in Christ, and if you're not trusting in all that God has done for us in Christ, then like Saul, you will constantly and continually make decisions that will lead to a tragic downfall. You will become a lament. At the heart of all of our spiritual problems, I want to emphasize that our spiritual problems, at the heart of all of our spiritual problems are these two things. God is not enough for us. And we're not satisfied in God, and so we are not trusting in God. Are you trusting God? Are you satisfied with God? Or are you just using God to try to get the things you really want to get? Something other than God, something behind God. Is he simply a means to something that you really desire besides him? This is a terribly hard thing for a religious person to grasp. Saul here, he epitomizes for us the person who is religious but lacks a relationship and it leads to his sin. destruction. Saul kept up religious practices over the whole course of his life, but he never knew God. He never knew God in a true sense, and so he and his entire kingdom at the end of his days become a lament. How the mighty have fallen. What about you? What about us? Are you religious or do you actually know God in Christ? Eternity hangs on this question. There are religious people all around us in the Bible Belt. There are far fewer who truly know God. But second, we learn tragically and are warned from Saul, he never learned how to rightly repent. He never learned how to truly repent. Now, if you're familiar with the story of Saul, that might at first sound a bit strange to you, because we can read of him being confronted by Samuel, and he's quick to confess, I sinned. I confess, I sinned. He's got no problem confessing his sin. He's ready to offer sacrifices. He's ready to admit that he sinned, and yet Samuel looks right at him in the eyes and says, you've rejected the word of the Lord. He's ready to go through the remotions of repentance and prayer, but his life shows he was not repentant. So this raises the question for us. Are you walking in true repentance or some kind of sham substitute? I can't tell you how many conversations I've been in where I have seen people who are ready to admit they did wrong, often with tears. They're ready to admit they made a mistake. They're ready to admit their guilt and their fault, but they are not ready to repent. You see, we often confuse repentance with a feeling of sorrow, right, a feeling of guilt, a confession of our wrongdoing. But biblical repentance is not simply admitting that we've done something wrong, but it's turning to a new direction. It's realigning our lives with God and His ways. Biblical repentance comes when we trust God and we're so satisfied in God that we are able to unconditionally surrender to Him. So how do we know if we're truly repentant? Well, thankfully, there's some clear signs that we can see in our lives, in the lives of our brothers and sisters, right? We are to carry one another's burdens. In our culture, that's called judging, right? If you go to someone and say, Hey man, I see this in your life. This is sin. This is where it's gonna lead, right? That's not biblical. Paul says Galatians 6, carry one another's burdens, help restore those who are sinning, right? So what can we see? Let me give you a few. First, false repentance will often rationalize sin, and it will shift blame. Like Saul, when he's confronted by Samuel, people are ready to say, I sinned. We're happy to admit that, yeah, I made a mistake. Yeah, I'm guilty here. But then comes the but, right? Yes, I made a mistake, but, but, but, but, right? But I've got 10 million excuses that show why I did that, that justify me in doing that. So yeah, I made a mistake, but here's why. You know, I shouldn't have done this, but. The excuses are endless, but the heart behind the excuses are the same. that I was justified in what I did. I was justified in what I did and therefore I don't actually need to repent and so we falsely repent. Second, false repentance will show itself in unchanged behavior. As we've already said, true biblical repentance is not shown in some kind of emotional experience, right? It's not just trying to have this cathartic experience so that we can rid ourselves of the guilt, so we can satisfy our own conscience. But it's a change in life. that brings itself into conformity with God and His ways. It's a change of life, a life that looks different. So if you have an unfaithful spouse and you find out about their unfaithfulness and they say, I'm sorry, I repent, but they keep being unfaithful, then they prove their confession of repentance to be false. It's a changed life. The most certain way to test, to discern whether we have really repented is simply look at our lives. Are we, by the grace of God, fighting with all of our might to put sin to death and to be more like Christ. If not, we are not walking in repentance. We just have to be honest about that, right? It's not gonna do you any good to be able to keep up spiritual appearances, right? You might be able to impress us with your spirituality. God knows. Jesus knows. And the end will be tragic if you do not walk in repentance. Third, false repentance will often show itself in partial obedience, right? And this is, in some ways, even more dangerous because we see some fruit, right? It looks like you're actually repenting, right? We'll happily obey God in one area of our lives, but not every area, right? So this is often, at the same time, usually conditional obedience, right? Okay, God, if you'll do this for me, well then I'll read my Bible and I'll go to church But I'm not going to give a dime of my money to that church. That's mine. And I've worked hard for it. It's mine. Right? Okay, Lord, I'll give you my private life. I'll worship you in my private life. But my public life, that is my domain. If Jesus, the false repentance is happy to have Jesus as a Savior, but not as Lord. But if Jesus is not your Lord, He is not your Savior. One of the places I commonly see this, kind of false repentances and marriage counseling where usually one spouse is there crying their eyes out while the other is just justifying and justifying and justifying their ways. And it's interesting that I see it so often there because one of the main ways we see God speaking of the way He relates to us throughout the whole entire Bible is as a husband who has wed us as His bride. who loves us faithfully even when we are unfaithful. He's been faithful to love us, and yet we are so often that unfaithful spouse. who has a million excuses on hand to justify our unfaithfulness. Are you justifying your unfaithfulness or are you walking in repentance? Part of the good news of the gospel is that because of what Jesus has done for us in His life, in His death, in His resurrection, God will never turn away someone who repents. There's no amount of unfaithfulness in your life that is greater than what God has done for us in Jesus on the cross and in the resurrection. And so it's utterly foolish for us not to repent. Your sin is not too great. So many people are destroying their lives, and they're destroying their marriages, and they're destroying their relationships because they refuse to repent. And because of it, one day they're going to become a lamentation. Oh, how he has fallen. How she has fallen. How their marriage has fallen. How His ministry has fallen. How the mighty have fallen. The major difference between Saul and David is not that Saul was a sinner and David was not. The major difference is that David repented when he sinned. Are you going to walk in repentance to the glory of God and Christ, or are you going to refuse repentance and make a shipwreck of your life? I see it so often, and it always ends in tragedy. Final lesson from the life of Saul here, final warning to see from this tragic lament, is that Saul died the very death that all sinners, that's all of us, deserve to die. He died the very death. All of us deserve to die. Saul dies here under the judgment of God, as all sinners do who die in their rebellion, who die in their sin. He died stripped of his power. He died stripped of his glory, his shield no longer. anointed. To die without God is a tragic end that calls for lament. And it's quite ironic here in chapter 1, you get this Amalekite who shows up from the battlefield and he gives this lie to David about how he killed Saul. But we know it's a lie because you can read the end of 1 Samuel how Saul died. And it's ironic you have this Amalekite claiming that he killed Saul because in a very real sense, The Amalekites did destroy Saul and his kingdom long before Saul ever fell on his spear. Saul lost his own kingdom because he took plunder from the Amalekites when God said, destroy everything. And the reality is, if you choose the plunder of the world, in the end, the world will plunder you and you will be without God. But there are glimpses of hope in the midst of this dark cloud of Saul's demise, where we'll end this morning. The death of Saul brings to an end a kingdom that is dominated by rebellion against God, and it makes room for this rise of another kingdom that's going to renew the kingdom. It's going to be a renewed kingdom. which will ultimately become an everlasting kingdom whose throne is occupied at this very moment by Jesus our Lord. But the glory of this everlasting kingdom is that we don't have to die the sinner's death. Because our King has died it for us. In our place. As our substitute. Bearing the full wrath of God that we deserve. That we had earned. The righteous for the unrighteous. The King becoming a slave. That slaves might one day reign with Him in His kingdom. Jesus was killed like Saul by the enemies of God, mocking Him and ridiculing Him so that He could reign like David, but greater than David. And that we might be rescued from this present evil age. brought into his kingdom. One of the questions the books of Samuel constantly raise to us. It's a question we need to ask ourselves constantly. What kingdom are you serving? What king are you worshiping? Are you building your own kingdom? Are you living your life for the kingdom that is everlasting? Are we going to die like Saul? clinging to a kingdom of our own making? Or will we be united to Christ in his death so that we become united with him in his resurrection? Will we reign with Christ forever in a new creation? Or will we be at the end of our days nothing more than a lament? How the mighty have fallen.