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Okay, so last week we focused
on prayer. And it doesn't seem like last
week that Mwaka and Leti, is that right? Did I get it right?
Were with us, all right? That seems to me like a fortnight
ago at least, but it was last week. And I focused on prayer
last week as we were looking at the armor of God. And I wanna
just give one final thought on prayer before we go on from that,
because I kinda wish I would've said this last week. Just some
basics about prayer. Plan a time to pray. You know,
I mean, that's pretty basic, but if you don't plan a time
to pray, you're not going to pray. So have a set time every day where
you spend time in prayer. If it's morning, do it every
morning. If it's evening, do it every evening. The danger
of evening is that you get too tired and you put it off. The
danger of morning is you don't get up, you don't have time,
and you omit it. But if you plan a time to pray, that would really
help. Plan a place to pray. Have a place that is your place,
that you get a side to pray. You might have a lot of places,
but the Bible does speak about get in your closet. It doesn't
mean that we're to be totally secretive, like a spy or something. Nobody can know about my prayer
life. We're not to talk about or pray to be seen of men. That's
what the Bible's teaching when it speaks about that secrecy,
but it's all right to let people know that you pray. I hope you
think, your pastor prays, and I'm not gonna run around and
act like that's a big secret. If I have a prayer life, and
it's not like that, but we need that privacy, that secrecy, just
to be us and God. And so that might mean getting
into a closet to pray, getting into that place where you can
pray. But as you think about that, pray out loud if possible.
That's another good reason to get aside. Jesus often did. He
went into the wilderness or into the mountainside or with his
men even. He would draw off from his men
a ways. And I think that's probably because he's speaking to God
and he's praying out loud. And I think that's a great thing
to do. It makes prayer very personal. It also prepares you for public
prayer when we pray together as a church, and you're used
to praying out loud, and so that's a good thing as we do that as
well. And then keep a journal. If it
helps you to write things down, and I've even been thinking about
this lately. I've never kept a prayer journal. I've always
just prayed. And I want to be careful about that because I
don't want to be somebody that becomes like a person that prays rotely,
where you just pray right through your prayer list. And it's kind
of like, if I just say this, God hears me. We need to be sensitive,
let the spirit of God lead us in prayer so that we never become
like we're coming to God and reading a phone book to God,
but that it's personal communion with God. And there might be
somebody not on that list God wants us to pray about. We need
to be ready to pray for them. but there might be some specific
things. Like I thought last night, I prayed about this. I prayed,
God, in the next two years, give us three deacons, all right?
Maybe you want to join me in praying about that. In the next
two years, give us three deacons. Did you get that? I see you kind
of... Yes, three deacons for our church. All right. I could
see the puzzle in your face. All right. And so if that would
be a good thing to pray about together, but I want to write
stuff like that down so that I put a date down so that two
years from now and I want to continue to pray about it that
we can see God do that. We're praying as a church for 50 people when
we move into our permanent location. We've seen some great movement
in that direction, and let's keep praying about that. But
maybe that's where a prayer list comes in handy, as well as with
that prayer list, you could have Bible promises. So you're praying
about something, you could write down a promise beside it. This
is what God says. And we, with our church, we're
claiming Jeremiah 33, calling to me and I will answer thee
and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not, as we're
praying about a location. And there's some other scripture
that God's given us with that as well. But it's always good
to take the promise of God and say, God, this is what your word
says, and I'm asking, and I'm waiting on you to do this. And
so that would be a great thing. And that's where your prayer
life can really grow as well. Now, back to our story. Saul
gave a brief reprieve. I said before that it lasted
for one verse in the Bible, but the Bible sometimes skips a length
of time. It doesn't really tell us about that time. And so Saul
said, okay, I'm not gonna kill David. Now he's back to wanting
to kill David. And so as we think about how
things are going here at Saul's life, it's not going well, and
it's his fault. He could have prevented this,
what's gonna take place, but he doesn't. I wanna think about
how he could have prevented it. And so Saul, refused to cut himself
off from his sin. Okay, he refused to cut himself
off from his sin. Notice what it says, the verse
here, let me see if I can find it because I'm jumping into the
middle of a verse in my notes. And verse nine, okay? It says, as he sat in his house,
and this is 1 Samuel 19, as he sat in his house with his what? Do you see it? Javelin in his
hand, all right? He's got the javelin in his hand. Now, has Saul had a problem with
his javelin in the past where it's caused him to sin or been
part of his sin? Yes, twice he's tried to pin
David to the wall with it. He's tried to murder somebody
that was there in his court twice, and who knows other times that
this happened, the Bible maybe doesn't speak about it, but he's
had a real problem with anger, he's had a real problem with
taking that and trying to kill somebody with that, but he's
got it right there in his hand. You know, wisdom... Wisdom would
say lock that javelin away except when you go to battle. It's an
instrument of war. Now I understand the king's got to protect himself
and maybe there's some argument there, but it's an instrument
of war. It's been a temptation to Saul
to take that in anger and use it in a way that God says is
unlawful to use that. It would have been wise for him
to lock that away. You know, one of the best things
that you can do in your spiritual life is destroy that which is
used in sin. All right, so if there's a temptation
to the flesh, and I know my weaknesses, we all know our weaknesses, we
know areas where we failed God, we know areas that aren't a temptation
to us, I'll say alcohol's not a temptation for me at all. I
didn't grow up in a home that had alcohol in the home. I've
never drunk alcohol. I've had alcohol, I guess, in
cough medicine or something like that. But I've never developed
a taste for it. I've seen what it does to people.
My granddad grew up in a drunkard's home. And I'll just say, I mean,
for me, that's not a temptation. But from other people, that might
be a temptation for them because of their background, because
of where they've been and whatnot. But we understand. And let me
give you this verse as well. And the thing is this, sin is
common. So, you know, if I struggle with
sin, I know this, other people struggle with the same sin that
I struggle with. Satan likes to come and say, you're the only
one that struggles this bad, you're the only one that has
it this bad, things like that. But the thing is, everybody struggles
with sin and we know the sin that we struggle with. So what
should we do? We ought to look at the sin that we struggle with
and say, I'm going to cut myself off from that sin. I'm going
to make it as difficult as possible for me to commit that sin because
I know maybe the word that comes to my mind is besetting sin,
right? A sin that is a common stumbling
block in our lives. And we can all identify things
like that. You know, in Acts, Acts is, if
you want to read the book of Acts in your Bible, it's a history
of the early church. So after the gospel went out
about Jesus Christ and his death, his resurrection, and salvation
by grace through faith in him, when that gospel went out and
the church was established, Acts is a record of what was taking
place. When the gospel worked in the lives of some people that
were involved in witchcraft, There was a great response that
they had to God when they got saved and it's recorded in Acts
19 verse 19. It says, many of them also which
used curious arts brought their books together and burned them
before all men and they counted the price of them and found it
50,000 pieces of silver back then. Now if you read about that
today, that people got saved and that their life was so radically
changed that they took the instruments of sin that were in their lives
and they took that and they destroyed it, you'd think, wow, something
real has happened. Their avenue back to their old
life of wickedness against God and wizardry and witchcraft and
those things, that was burned. I mean, they couldn't easily
go back to that because they had taken a stand and they said,
no, I'm gonna live for God, I'm gonna obey God, and that is a
great thing. Romans 6 verse 12 says, let not
sin therefore reign in your mortal body that you should obey it
and the lust thereof. Now, is that a choice? Yes, let
not sin therefore reign. I mean it's saying make that
decision. You're not going to be a servant of sin, but you're
going to be a servant of God. Verse 13, neither yield you your
members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. Now our body has many
members and with many of those members we can sin against God,
whether it's our eyes, our tongue, our ears, our hands, whatever
it is, we can sin with that. But the Bible says not to yield
our members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but
yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the
dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For
sin shall not have dominion over you, for you're not under the
law, but under grace. When you got saved, you're no
longer under that condemnation of the law. You're under grace.
God's forgiven you. He's given you new life. And
then it goes on to say, what then, shall we sin because we're
not under the law but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not that
to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are
to whom ye obey? whether of sin unto death, of
obedience unto righteousness." All right? I could be the servant
of righteousness today, like Samuel, living for God. Or I
could be the servant of sin, like Eli's sons that were living
in wickedness and enslaved to ungodliness, even though they're
at the temple. It's a choice of what we're going
to do. We support in Ireland. Layton Kelly and he's gonna be
here on a Tuesday and if you're able to visit the you know here
on a Tuesday As we host the pastor's fellowship, you're welcome to
come Layton's gonna come he's gonna preach there but Layton
has a ministry to addicts and so people whose lives are enslaved
by sin he has a A place where they can get away, where they
can come and they can stay, get out of their old haunts of sin,
get in a place with men to encourage them and strengthen their hands
as they get victory over addiction, whatever addiction that might
be. That's a great thing. You know,
we just missed men's camp. It was this past week. I was
praying for them. Men's camp is great, any camp ministry is
great, because you get people away from the world, get them
in an environment that's a great environment, and preach to them
the truth of the word of God. That's a great thing, get them
out of that environment of sin, get them in a place of righteousness
where you can really work the truth of the word of God into
their hearts. Our homes, as a believer, ought
to be sanctuaries from sin. The best thing that you could
do is you think about in the future, some of us, it's present, you
know, one of the great things that we ought to think about
is, God, help my home to be a sanctuary from sin. I understand Jesus
said, you know, your feet are going to get dirty walking in
the world, right? He talked about you're going to walk and you're
going to get dusty feet and that whole picture that he gave of
washing the disciples' feet is that you're going to be walking
through the world and you're going to get at times stained
by the world, but you gotta get what? Cleansed from that. So let's think about it. In our
home, let's make our home an oasis, a place to protect from
sin. Now, my cousin just had her first
baby, all right? And they got home from the hospital
just a few days ago with that little baby. You know what? When
you have your first child, what do you do with your house? You
childproof it, right? I mean, you start thinking about
choking hazards, never thought about before, but you got a child
in that home, you want to protect them. You start thinking about
these outlets, you know, you got to turn them off and you
got to put that plug in there because you don't want a little
kid, you know, taking something and poking it into a hole. heaven
forbid, having some horrible event take place. You're careful,
you know, in ways that you've never been careful before. I
remember when we took Kaylee and we put her in the back of
the car from the hospital. You know, I got a little kid in the back
and it's the first time for me driving home from the hospital.
You know, you're just in a panic. You kind of feel like everybody's
going to rear end you because you're aware that that little
life is there and you want to protect them. Listen, we're careful
about physical things in our home where we ought to be or
we're not good parents if we're not doing that. So should we
protect our home spiritually, right? Now, as you think about
it, I think it's pretty obvious we ought not have alcohol in
our home. I think that's an obvious thing. We shouldn't have cigarettes
in our home. I think that's an obvious thing. We shouldn't have
pornography in our home. I think that's an obvious thing. But
the greatest avenue that Satan has into our homes is really,
as I think about it, it may be a couple things, who comes into
our home and the influences in our home as well as technology. Technology in our day has just
opened up the world to our home. So we can say, well, our home's
a sanctuary. We don't live like that. But
if we allow that in, whether profanity or immodesty, indecency,
wicked music, wicked ideas, even the advertisements that are advertising
wickedness and promoting wickedness, and if that is just into our
home and it is unfiltered and unfettered, we've got a problem. It's like Saul. I mean, Saul's
got the javelin in his hand. I mean, what's gonna keep him
from murdering somebody? I mean, he's got the avenue to
that sin right there. We need to be aware of that and
say, you know what? I don't want a javelin in my hand because that could
hurt my kids. You know what? It could hurt
me. It could hurt my marriage. And so I'm gonna do everything
in my power to watch out for that. Now, there are filters
that you can get. There are channels that you can
block. You don't have to have a telly, by the way. You don't
have to have a mobile phone. Do you know this? I mean, this sounds
like a foreign concept in our day to say this, but I would
say this. It would be better not to have a mobile phone. It
would be better not to have a telly. It'd be better not to have internet
access than to have a marriage defiled, a family defiled, a
child corrupted by ungodliness that comes in through that means.
There's a javelin there. We got to be wise about that
and say, you know what? Let's get a filter. Let's have
a filter. Let's have rules. Let's have
regulations. Let's have transparency and clarity
and accountability. There's a lot of things that
you could do to really protect your home from ungodliness. We ought to do that. And we certainly
don't want to wait too long to do that. It's too late after
it happens to do something. James 1 14 says but every man
is tempted When he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed Then
when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin and sin when it is
finished bringeth forth death Okay, the end of sin is death
Satan says it's life Satan says to young people, this is where
it's at. It's in cigarettes. It's in alcohol. It's in immorality. It is in deceit. It is in thievery. It is in gambling. I mean, just
think of the list of things that Satan says this is life. You
know what? It's death. I'm going to refer to it in the
morning message. We read last Sunday night about
a lady whose life was destroyed by gambling. And you know what? She's one of hundreds of thousands
in the UK. And actually one of millions
in the UK. And Satan says, that's life.
That's where it is at. You got to give yourself to that.
And you got to give yourself to that sin. Listen, cigarettes
kill. You know, I've been grieved by
this. You know, Scotland has these laws about you got to put smoke
detectors in your rooms and it's going to cost several hundred
pounds to households around the United Kingdom to fireproof their
home. Now, do I care about the people
that have died because they haven't had those in their homes? Yes,
I do. But I would say this and I would like to know the statistic.
I wonder if it's out there. I would say it's under 100 people
a year. I would just suggest that it's
probably much lower than that. But you know, the number of people
that die from alcohol, the number of people that die from smoking,
the number of people that die from these vices that the government
is making a ton of money on is far above that. Why? Because the end of sin is death. That's what the word of God says,
and that's what it is. And so a marriage that gets into
immorality and adultery, or it just leads to divorce, it leads
to a broken family, it destroys that family. Why? Because the
end of that sin is death. So what should I do? Let's protect
our homes. Let's not have an avenue into
any of these sins and do our best against that. And by the
way, I'm applying it to our homes, but it applies to my life first. I can't say, well, I really wish
I could get victory over my sin of murder if I've got a spear
in my hand, all right? The javelin's in my hand, I can't
say, God, set me free from this. I gotta say, set me free from
this, right? Get rid of it so that you can
live in victory. So I just wanna encourage this.
Don't live in defeat, live in victory by not making provision.
And so Romans 13, verse 14 says, but put ye on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the
lust thereof. Okay, don't have that avenue
to ungodliness cut it off. It might be deleting an app.
It might be unfriending a friend. That's an ungodly friend. It
might be getting off the chat rooms. It might be getting off,
you know, those things. But if it burns you, burn it,
right? Take care of it because we don't
wanna have those avenues to sin. And so Saul refused to cut himself
off from his sin. That's why we're gonna see that
he's failing. And then secondly, Saul refused to open his heart
to God. He refused to open his heart
to God. It says in our verse here, and again, I think we're
in verse nine, it says, and David played with his hand. All right,
what's he playing? He's playing music, but what
is it? It's God honoring music. It is music that is spiritual
in nature. David's the sweet psalmist of
Israel. If you didn't know this, the book of Psalms, the majority
of that book, which is the Hebrew hymnal, as it were, that is written
by King David. He's a great musician that God
gifted in those ways. And so it's spiritual music.
It should have worked in the heart of Saul powerfully. It's
what the Bible speaks about in Ephesians 5, 19, when it says,
speaking to yourselves in Psalms, and hymns and spiritual songs,
singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord." Now,
spiritual music is powerful. God-honoring music is powerful.
Now, the devil has power in his music, but it's in the music.
It's in the wickedness of that. The power of God is in the purity
of the music, right? Christian music. God-honoring
music. Remember, evil spirits used to
leave Saul alone when David played with the harp because God would
graciously speak to Saul's heart and Saul would get victory. 1
Samuel 16 verse 15, remember the servants came and they said,
come on, you need a man that can play well on the harp and
that's going to help you when the evil spirit from God is upon
you and it's going to make you well. And Saul said unto his
servants, provide me now a man that can play well. and bring
him to me. And it came to pass when the
evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp
and he played with his hand. So Saul was refreshed and was
well, and the evil spirit departed from him." Okay, that was in
the past, right? Initially that worked. But in Saul's heart, what do
we see? There is bitterness against whom? David, there's envy against David. So I mean, it's corrupting Saul's
heart. And you know what happens when somebody grabs hold of sin
and holds on to sin? The Bible calls it a hard heart. He's hardening his heart against
God. God's spirit is speaking to his heart about it, but there's
a hardness that's there so hard that when that spiritual music
is played, it doesn't even begin to work in the heart of Saul
anymore. You can't get anything out of it. You know, there ought
to be a spiritual blessing when you come to the house of God,
amen? All right, ought to be that there is a challenge that's given
to our hearts and we ought to go away refreshed and strengthened
and encouraged. But you know, we can't always
get that if we've got a hard heart. If our heart is harboring
sin, as soon as I start to grab hold of sin and my heart just
hardens against God. And that's Saul. Saul has a hard
heart and he's not getting the blessing from it. You know, spiritual
blessing has to be received by men. It could be out there, but
it has to be taken in by faith for those that would receive
it. I remember Paul preaching at Athens in Acts chapter 17,
verse 30. There's kind of three types of
people in the audience. There's hard-hearted people,
there's open-hearted people, and there's believing people.
There, there, listen to it in the story. It says, and Paul's
preaching, he says, the times of this ignorance God winked
at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent. "'because
he hath appointed a day "'in the which he will judge the world
in righteousness "'by that man whom he hath ordained, "'whereof
he hath given assurances unto all men "'that he hath raised
him from the dead. "'And when they heard of the
resurrection of the dead, "'some mocked, they had hard hearts,
"'and others said, well, hear thee again of this matter, "'they
had kind of open hearts. "'So Paul departed from among
them, "'howbeit certain men claimed unto him and believed, "'they
had believing hearts. Among the witch was Dionysius
the Arapagate and a woman named Damaris and others with them."
Okay, some had hard hearts, some had open hearts, some had believing
hearts. Now, hard hearts are made hard
by unyielding to God when it comes to sin. John 3, 19 says,
this is the condemnation that light has come into the world
and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds
were evil. All right, if I, and I say the vast majority of our
day has hard hearts. I mean, you go and speak to them
the truth of the word of God, that there is a God that loves
them, that died on the cross for their sin, that he's creator,
designer, that he desires to set them free from their sin
and begins to name what that sin is. You know, a lot of them
are like, forget you. They're gonna mock. There's other people
that have open hearts. They're kind of like, well, maybe.
Maybe, that's an open heart. I think an open heart is somebody
that is weighing it and thinking about it. Hebrews 4.2 says, for
unto us was the gospel preached as well as unto them, but the
word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith
in them that heard it. And I'd say this, somebody can
have an open heart, but until they believe, they don't receive. Right, there's no profit yet.
but they're thinking about it. Now it can go either way. They
can either go hard-hearted, reject it, or they can open their heart
and believe it, right? So the open-hearted person, I
would say they're in the middle of that. And then there's the
believing person. They're gonna get everything
that God desires to give because they're gonna take it by faith.
1 John 5, 4 says, for whatsoever is born of God, overcome at the
world, and this is the victory, that overcome at the world, even
our faith. Faith is this, God, you said
it, I believe it. And it is this as well, God forgive
me because you are right and I am wrong, right? Some of that comes to that point,
I mean, you're at the point of victory if you're at that point
of yielding to God and say, God, I believe, and therefore I accept,
and therefore I'm not gonna hold onto that. So I'm not gonna fight
against you. As soon as we start to fight
against God, we harden our heart. We'll see that tonight in our
study of Proverbs, a great verse there about hardening our hearts. And so, what kind of a heart
do you have today? As you think about it, you come
to church, and praise God, you're here this morning, but do you
have a hard heart? Is there anything in your heart that God is saying
something and you're like, no. You know, pastor spoke about
guarding our house from sin. I don't want to limit the telly.
I just want whatever to be on the telly. I want on the telly.
Well, you know, that's a hard heart because there's a lot of
immorality. There's a lot of junk on the
telly that dishonors God. And unless we're going to deal
with that, we've got a hard heart, right? Cause we're not going
to obey God in that. Right. I could have a, Open heart, well,
maybe, maybe, you know, that's, maybe there is something to that,
not just that, but everything. Maybe if God will convince me of it,
I just, I'm weighing it in the balance and again, it can go
either way, but, or do you have a believing heart? That would
say, God, I accept it. I accept it. I take it because
it's your word. It's your truth. I'm going to
obey you in that. Saul didn't have that. Saul had
a hard heart. And so he refused to open his
heart to God. And the third thing I want us
to consider is that only God's restraining grace kept Saul from
great evil. Only God's restraining grace
kept him from the sin of murder. And so verse 10, it says, and
Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the javelin,
but he slipped away out of Saul's presence and he smote the javelin
into the wall and David fled and escaped that night. Now,
did Saul want to hit him? Yeah. Was Saul good with his
weapons? Yeah, so who intervened? See,
God intervened, and I know we could say, well, that was for
David. God was being merciful to David, not allowing David
to die and whatnot. I understand that, but God was
also being merciful to who? Saul, because it's a very bad
thing to commit the sin of murder. And so in God's grace, God prevented
that. And yet, despite that, Saul refuses
to give up his wicked lust to kill David, even though God in
his restraining grace kept him from the evil that he intended
to do. Yet, despite that, he's still
pushing against God. And I want to say this, it's
a sad thing when God intervenes in a man's life in a merciful
way to prevent that man from great transgression, and yet
that man continues to push on. Does that make sense? Now, I
call this, and I think it would be properly called restraining
grace. It's kind of like what the saying is, except by the
grace of God, there go I. I see somebody falling into great
transgression that I understand that it's only God's mercy that
I haven't also fallen to that same sin. If a man be overtaken
in a fall, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit
of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. And so there is a possibility
that I could go down that path and I ought not look at somebody
and say I would never do that because there's every chance
in the world I would given the right circumstances. I pray God
I never be put in a circumstance like that. Now praise God, God
will never put us in circumstances beyond which we're able to bear.
We've already talked about that. But why? Because God is restraining
his grace. I'm sorry, he has restraining
grace. Romans chapter one, God gave them over to a reprobate
mind to do those things which are not convenient. How did he
do that? By taking away his restraining
grace. It's kind of like God says, all right, you want to
have a hard heart against me? You want to have a hard heart
against me? You've rejected me, you've rejected me, you've rejected
me, okay, have your way. Have your way. You know what,
I want to be somebody that when God stops me on a path of disobedience,
that I go, whoa, God, thank you. And I'm gonna step back. Because
I could've stepped over the edge. I could've fallen off a precipice
that would've been very difficult to get back from, but God in
his mercy kept me from going down that path. That's a great
thing, God is a merciful God. Now I wanna illustrate that with
the story of Balaam. Turn in your Bibles to Genesis, Exodus,
Numbers. Leviticus, Numbers. Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, fourth book. Numbers chapter 22. They're big books, so you have
to go forward a little bit. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. In chapter 22, and it's the story
of Balaam and Balak, okay, which is a little confusing. The king,
Balak, king of Moab, desires Balaam, a prophet of God, to
curse God's people, curse Israel. He's gonna try to get them to
do that. Numbers 22, verse 12. And God said unto Balaam, thou
shalt not go with them. Don't go with them, they want
you to curse the people. Thou shalt not curse the people
for they are blessed. In verse 13. And Balaam rose
up in the morning and said unto the princes of Balak, get you
into your land, for the Lord refuses to give me leave to go
with you. And the princes of Moab rose up and they went unto
Balak and said, Balaam refuses to come with us, verse 15. And
Balak sent yet again princes more and more honorable than
they. And they came to Balaam and said to him, thus saith Balak,
the son of Zippor, let nothing I pray thee hinder thee from
coming unto me. For I will promote thee unto very great honor, and
I will do whatsoever thou sayest unto me. Come therefore, I pray
thee, curse me this people. Balaam answered and said unto
the servants of Balak, if Balak would give me his house full
of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the word of the Lord
my God to do less or more. Now, therefore, I pray you, Terry,
you also hear this night that I may know what the Lord will
say unto me. God came unto Balaam at night and said unto him, if
the men come to call thee, rise up and go with them. But yet
the word which I shall say unto thee, thou shalt do. Okay, now,
question, did God give him permission to go? Yes, but the permission
is very limited, and he was not to fulfill what Balaam desired,
and that's to curse the people of God. And so should he really
have gone in a sense? And the answer is no. And notice
what it says, verse 21, Balaam rose up in the morning, he saddled
his donkey, he went with the princes of Moab, and God's anger
was kindled because he went. And you might again think, why
is God upset? God said he could go. Well apparently
he's going but not as God intended. I mean it's obvious that somehow
he's transgressed what God has said even though he's allowed
to go yet in going he has disobeyed God. Now continue on in verse
22 in the middle. The angel of the Lord stood in
the way for an adversary against him. This is Jesus pre-incarnate
Now he was riding upon his donkey, and his two servants were with
him. And the donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way,
and his sword drawn in his hand. And the donkey turned aside out
of the way and went into the field. And Balaam smote the donkey
to turn her into the way. Now listen, when you're on the
path of rebellion against God and the way becomes difficult,
what should you do? Go back. There's a reason it's
difficult. There's a reason it's not easy.
It's the mercy of God saying, no, don't do it, don't go there,
don't have your way. And so God's trying to prevent
something. Now, keep reading. The angel of the Lord went further
and stood in a narrow place, verse 26, where was no way to
turn either to the right hand or to the left. And when the
donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she fell down under Balaam and
Balaam's anger was kindled and he smote the donkey with a staff.
And the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey. Okay, normally
can a donkey talk? No, unless the creator designer
allows the donkey to talk. And she said unto Balaam, what
have I done unto thee that thou hast spent me these three times?
And Balaam said unto the donkey, because thou hast mocked me,
there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee. He's
so upset, I guess he doesn't even realize he's speaking to
a donkey. And the donkey said unto Balaam, Am not I thine donkey,
upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day?
Was I ever wont to do so unto thee? And he said, Nay. Then
the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord
standing in the way, and the sword drawn in his hand. And
he bowed down his head, and he fell flat on his face. And the
angel of the Lord said unto him, Wherefore hast thou smitten thine
donkey these three times? Behold, I went out to withstand
thee because thy way is perverse before me." Listen, if somebody
gets off the path, is God going to do something about it? Yes. And when God does, that person
ought to wake up, look and listen and say, I'm not going to go
down this path because it's a path of disobedience against God.
And so my point is this, and we got to conclude here because
of time. My point is this, Saul didn't. Look at verse 11 in our
text, if you have a finger there, I'll read it for you. It says,
Saul also sent messengers unto David's house to watch him and
to slay him in the morning. He misses him, but he doesn't
give up. Because he is so set on his disobedience
against God that he's gonna have that sin no matter what. And
you know he's not gonna get it. God's not gonna allow him to
get it. But he should have cut himself off from it. And so as
we conclude with that, let's just think about it. How could
Saul have had the victory? Well if he had Cut himself off from
his sin, he wouldn't have gotten into greater sin. He should have had an open heart
to God, because that music would have blessed his soul. He could
have had revival, but he had a hard heart against God. And
he should have responded. When God in his mercy allowed
him to miss, he should have got on his face and said, God, I'm
so sorry. I've tried to transgress against you again. Thank you
for preventing me, and I yield. And so in those ways, all of
us could have victory in our lives. if we will cut ourselves
off, if we'll have a tender heart to God, an open heart, and if
we will respond. When God in his mercy stops us,
say, God, thank you, that's your mercy, let me respond to that.
And Saul could have, but he didn't. And so we learn from the life
of the failure of Saul this morning. Let's pray. Father, may the spirit
of God speak to our hearts. Now, there might be things that
we really need to do, like get rid of some DVDs, turn off some
channels, block some channels, get some safety, internet safety
on our phone, get some internet accountability with our devices,
turn the internet off at night, or things like that. I mean,
Father, Satan is very, Much a deceiver. He's gonna try to get people
to go down a path of disobedience against God. It's not gonna work
It's not to life. It's to death And father I pray that we would
not be so foolish that knowing we have a problem with anger.
We sit around with javelins in our hands And so spirit of God
give us grace make sure that we deal with sin cut ourselves
off And then yield as you graciously work in our lives so that we
could be everything that we ought to be For God and for God's glory
is in Christ and we pray. Amen
Lesson 17, Life of David
Series The Life of David
Saul could have dealt with the murderous bent of his heart, but he did not.
| Sermon ID | 42422135415366 |
| Duration | 36:22 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday School |
| Bible Text | 1 Samuel 19 |
| Language | English |
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