1st Samuel chapter 15, we'll read the verses listed in your bulletin, verses 1 through 3, 7 through 11, 13 through 15, and then 20 through 22. This is the word of the Lord. And Samuel said to Saul, the Lord sent me to anoint you Cain over his people Israel, now therefore listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. Skipping down to verse seven. And Saul defeated the Amalekites from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt. And he took Agag, the king of the Amalekites, alive, and devoted to destruction all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fattened calves, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction. The word of the Lord came to Samuel, I regret that I have made Saul came, for he has turned back from following me, and has not performed my commandments. And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the Lord all night. And Samuel rose early, excuse me, and now verse 13. And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, Blessed be you to the Lord, I have performed the commandment of the Lord. And Samuel said, what then is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear? Saul said, they have brought them from the Amalekites for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God and the rest we have devoted to destruction. Then skipping down to verse 20. And Saul said to Samuel, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag, the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal. And Samuel said, 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 listen than the fat of rams. Amen. Thus far the reading of God's word. Let's pray and ask the Lord for his blessing upon our time in his word. Gracious God and Father, give us a heart this morning and every day to live according to every word that proceeds from your mouth, to see your word as our very life and to never depart from it. And Father, when we do, to turn back and to return to you. Father, the God of our salvation, our Father through Jesus Christ, our hope, our life, our joy, Father, help us now to understand what good works are according to your word, Father, which is the only standard of right and wrong, our only standard for life and doctrine. We pray, hear us now, in Jesus' name, amen. What are good works? What are good works? We've been noting, we've been talking and considering this phrase, good works, this doctrine, as part of the gratitude we owe God, right? God has saved us. God has changed us. He's transformed us. He's at work in our lives still. And so we are to offer to God that which arises out of our heart of love for God, out of that new nature that we have as Christians. And so when we consider good works, right, they are the gratitude, the love, the obedience, the worship that we owe God. but we want to focus in a little bit more and center ourselves on what exactly is a good work and to understand what good works are from God's word. Is a good work anything that you want to do for God, that you desire to do for God? Is a good work anything that we do with good intentions? Is that considered a good work? Is that pleasing to God? Is anything and everything we do a good work and pleasing to God? What we find in God's Word and summarized for us in the Heidelberg Catechism is that a good work has three criteria. A good work that is pleasing to God must be done out of true faith. And I'm looking at Heidelberg Catechism question and answer 91, right? Only those, but what are good works? Only those which are done out of true faith, that's number one. conform to God's law, that's number two, and are done for his glory. Out of true faith, according to God's law, for God's glory. We would say, to paraphrase that, you have to have the right motive out of a true nature, a godly nature, you must have a right standard, and you must live and do it for the right goal. So right motive, right standard, right goal. Notice the first criteria, out of true faith. What does this mean that good works are done out of true faith? It means that, it's asking the question, what is the state, what is the nature of the person who is doing good works? Good works are born out of a heart that trusts Christ, that rests in his finished work. So if we were to say the opposite, right, the converse, we would say that an unbeliever who doesn't know the Lord cannot do good works. An unbeliever cannot do anything that pleases God, that gains God's favor, that merits God's salvation. An unbeliever can never do good works, why? For the simple fact that they deny Christ. They cannot please God because they are at war with God. They are in enmity with his will. Look at a number of passages that show us this, right? Romans chapter eight, verse eight. Romans eight, verse eight. Paul there says, let's start in verse six. Romans 8, to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. Right? The unbelieving mind is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. That's the language of ability. The hostile mind, the unbelieving mind is unable to submit to God's law. It finds in God's law no good thing, no perfect thing, no acceptable thing, but is at war with that law of God. And then notice verse eight here. Those who are in the flesh, the unbeliever, those who are in the flesh cannot please God, cannot please God. It's not just that they don't want to please God, it's that they have no ability to please God. We can look at other passages, Hebrews chapter 11. And without faith, it is impossible to please Him, to please God. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him. The heart that would please God, the life that would please God, and this is a vital element as we discuss how to serve God, how to please the Lord. As we discuss good works, the heart that would please God must love Jesus. You must have Jesus in front of you. You must desire the Lord. You must love the Lord. You must trust His finished work for you on the cross. You must see His person and His sacrificial death as your only salvation. We don't approach the Lord. We don't serve the Lord in our name. We don't offer prayers to God in our name, right? In the name of Samuel Perez, in the name of Adam, and so on and so forth. No, it's in the name of another, in the name of our great savior, in the name of our only mediator, Jesus Christ. We don't approach God in prayer or in obedience and in worship with our name, in our own power, with our righteousness, because we have none. but in the name and the person and the power and the righteousness and the merits of Jesus Christ. Without faith in Christ, there is no love of God. There is no true love of neighbor. Again, we can look at Romans 3, 11, where it says, there is none righteous. No, not one. There is none who serves the Lord. There is no one who actually does what is good outside of Jesus Christ. Man's works are foolish. They're detestable. They're rejected by God. At this point, you might be saying, well, is that really the case? Is that how we live? There are things that unbelievers do. And maybe you know many of them, right? That are good on an outward level, on a horizontal level, right? If it snows, they help you shovel your snow. If you get a flat tire, they might help you change your tires. Right? And this is what's been called civil righteousness. It's the kind of common grace that God allows in this world that allows this world to be a little less unbearable. In other words, it makes this fallen world a little more bearable. Civil righteousness. And yet, although unbelievers may do many things that seem very good and actually have a benefit to society, before God, none of that stuff matters. None of that counts towards righteousness. So what is a good work? First of all, it has to come out of true faith, the life, the heart that desires God, that has been changed by God to love Jesus. But secondly, it has to conform to God's law. How do we measure what's good and what's bad? How do we measure what's right and what's wrong? What's the standard that we use? And oftentimes, friends, in our world, what we find is that men and women and children and adolescents and teenagers, we all create a standard, and that standard is ourselves. We become the standard of right and wrong. And is that true though, is that right? According to God's word, no, it's not. Our standard of right and wrong, how we measure good and evil is and must be the law of God. In other words, every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, the Holy Scriptures. We noted in our text, 1 Samuel chapter 15, 1 Samuel 15, there we find, somewhat well-known story from the Old Testament. God commands the prophet Samuel to go to Saul, who is the king, the first king of Israel, and he commands Saul, through the prophet, to destroy the Amalekites, who are a blight on the land of Israel, who have forsaken the Lord, who have polluted the land with the shedding of blood, and they must be destroyed. What does Samuel do? Right, or what does Saul do, rather, the king? He refuses to understand that it is God's commandment that is the standard. It's God's commandment that is the standard, the measure of what he is to do. And here, this is a lesson for us, because we're so often like Saul. We think that something is good, but it violates God's law. but we go ahead and do it anyway. We think something is desirable and yet God prohibits it. So is it really good? Is it really to be desired? No, if it violates God's law. And then conversely, the same is true. We might think something is bad, but it's commanded by God's law. So is it really bad? Is it really to be rejected? No, it's to be done wholeheartedly. It's to be obeyed. God's law instructs and corrects us. I want you to see that good intentions count for very little here, right? Saul had good intentions. Saul said, I have a brilliant plan here. I can't believe God didn't think of this. We're gonna destroy the bad people of Amalek. Okay, we're gonna do that. But we're gonna save the best. We're gonna save the king. We're gonna save the best of the oxen and the sheep and the cattle because we could use those to sacrifice to God. Brilliant. And yet Saul misunderstood as often as we do. that no man has the right to fabricate a standard of right and wrong. You and I do not have the right to speculate, to wonder about what pleases God. God alone reveals to us what pleases Him. God alone tells us how to serve Him. God alone tells us how to love Him, right? You might want to, And we have a couple of meal trends managers. Thank you for organizing all of that. All right. You know, you might wanna give someone, right, who you're giving a meal to, whatever it is that you like. And yet they might be allergic to it, right? That's just the way it is. And you might say, no, no, no, this is so good for you. This is really, really, really, really good for you. It's our family's favorite meal. You gotta have it, you gotta try some. Yeah, but it could kill the family you're giving it to, right? And that's how we approach the law of God. That's how we approach the desire of God. We say we want to offer to God what pleases us, but not what pleases God. God tells us how to love Him. How to love Him is not centered upon our desire, but upon what He has revealed is His desire. How do we love God? God tells us. Obey my commandments repeatedly. In the Gospel account of John, in first John, if you love me, do my commandments. If you love me, obey my commandments. There are other examples in God's word where people had good intentions. We think of Nadab and Abihu at the time of Moses, right? These sons of Aaron, these two brothers who said, well, there's no fire right now in the altar of incense. Let's take fire from this other place. God hasn't authorized it, God hasn't commanded it, and yet what happens when they take that strange fire and offer it to God? God instantly kills them. They had a good desire, and yet they violated the clear statutes of God. You think of Uzzah later on in 2 Samuel, The Ark of the Covenant is being brought back to Jerusalem. David is dancing. He is just rejoicing before the presence of God. He can't believe that he gets to see the return of the Ark of the Covenant, which symbolizes God's presence, back to Jerusalem. And in the midst of that, the Ark is on a cart being dragged by oxen, and it must have hit a rock or something unstable, and it becomes unsteady. And what does Uzzah do? He reaches out, he stretches out his hand to steady the arc. And what happens to Uzzah? God strikes him dead. Good intentions don't matter. They matter. I'm being a little provocative here. Of course they matter. But when it comes to what God has revealed, they matter very little. Not as much as we might think. What matters is, God's law, are we conforming to God's law? The Heidelberg Catechism, of course, is written in the time of the Reformation. And at this time, 1563, when the catechism is written in Germany, there's all sorts of practices that Rome has developed. Right? And they have speculated, they've created all sorts of good works, a system, a set of good works, thousands and thousands of things that God never commanded. Right? And you can think of some of them even to this day that are practiced by our Catholic friends. Right? To become a nun, to become a monk makes you holier. than others, right? To take on a vow of poverty or a vow of singleness, a so-called vow of celibacy, right? That makes you holier. That's a sacrament the church would consider. You've taken up holy orders. Where is that in God's word? Where is that? These are things that man has created and God's word tells us as the catechism summarizes for us that whatever is good must be based on God's law and not on our own personal opinion or upon the collective opinion of mankind called human tradition. In our day, we see this all the time, right? And Christians, we can fall prey to this because we're so attuned to God's law, right? We want to love God, we want to love our neighbor. that the world tries to manipulate, right? Our love for neighbor. And all sorts of things get put in that category, love your neighbor, love your neighbor, right? I'm sure you've heard of this. Some of these examples, right? If you love your neighbor, you will affirm their sexual confusion. You gotta love your neighbor, you gotta affirm them, affirm their sexual confusion, right? You gotta love your neighbor, It's a loving thing to let a woman kill their unborn child. That's a loving thing we're told in our day. Love your neighbor means you gotta get vaxxed, right? It's like, where is that in God's word? These are clear, some of these, right? Listen, if you wanna get vaccinated, that's up to you, right? But some of these other things are a clear violation of God's law. And yet, because we don't know God's law, we can be easily duped and manipulated, right? There's no clear standard of right and wrong oftentimes in our day except our own selfish, sinful desires. No, what God says is that he tells us what's good. He tells us what's desirable. He tells us what his will, what his desire is. But thirdly, not only are good works to be done out of true faith, according to the law of God, but what is the end goal of our good works? They must be done for the glory of God. They must be done for the glory of God. 1 Corinthians 10 verse 31. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. This is such an important check on our lives. Why is it that we do what we do? Why is it that you do what you do? Is it for God? Do you have God in mind as you live your life? How easy it is to be distracted, right? To say, okay, Sunday, day of the Lord, Lord's Day, 24 hours, I'm gonna give it to the Lord, I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna read, I'm gonna sing with my family, I'm gonna spend time with God, and then once Monday comes, we start drifting and going astray, and we forget God so easily. No, you must live for God. You must live before his presence. You must do all that you do, not just on Sunday, but Monday through Saturday for the glory of God. And so I ask you, as scripture asks you, what is the goal of your life, of your works, of your service, of your worship, of your obedience? The glory of God? the honor of God that men, women, and those around you would know God, would know how great God is, or would you say to know how great you are? You're such a good chap. You're such an upstanding woman. Is it to uphold the truth of God's word? Is it to reflect the love of Christ? Is it to show the goodness of the Savior? Or is it to gain the approval of others? Is it to boast? Is it to impress others? Is it to become self-righteous? No one does this but you. You're the only one who does it and does it so well. I've noticed in recent days, my own heart, but also as I hear from the world, different venues, right? Have you ever met a Pharisee who doesn't boast of their self-righteousness? Who doesn't tell you of how worthy they are? Have you ever met a US Navy SEAL who doesn't tell you he's a US Navy SEAL? Have you ever met a graduate of Harvard who doesn't tell you he's a graduate of Harvard, right? All these little metrics, all these little things that we accumulate to boast. Have you ever met someone on a diet who doesn't tell you they're on a diet and why and which one it is and what calorie intake they have, right? It's almost like diets are meant to be shared. and so on and so forth. And hypocritically, we might do the right thing. We might say, well, I'm a believer, I've been regenerated by God, I have the spirit of God, all right, I want to do things out of true faith, okay? Number one, number two. I want to live according to the Word of God. I realize that in myself there is nothing good. I cannot be the standard of my own life of right and wrong, of good and evil. I wanna live according to the Word of God. But then third, we come up short, don't we, so often in this third criteria. We might do things, we might do the right things, but do it out of a selfish motive, out for selfish goals, for selfish reasons. just like the Pharisees, right? They gave money to the poor, but they did it very publicly. Here's my money, here's my, is anyone watching? Okay, here, you know. Jesus says that they would render long prayers, long prayers. When no one else is praying, I saw this recently, I was in the airport, you guys know I went to Canada recently, and I forget where in Canada, maybe Edmonton, I forget. The Jews literally still practice this. It doesn't matter what time of day, right? It doesn't matter what's around them. They put their phylacteries on, which is a little box that contains the 10 commandments in Hebrew. Strap it on their forehead, they wrap it around their arm. That little box is called a phylactery. And they pray, they put the prayer shawl on and they're praying. They're praying in front of everyone. Everyone can see how holy these people are, how pious these people are. They pray long prayers in public for show. The Christian can't be like this. We must do what we do for the glory of God, even if no one sees us, right? And so often in the Christian life, people of God, friends, so much of the Christian life is thankless, right? As you're, Obeying God and raising your children, right? No one's going to applaud you. Don't seek the approval of others. Don't seek the applause of others. As you're helping someone out in the church, right? Praise the Lord for your enthusiasm, for your initiative, for your work. And I thank you now beforehand and post facto as well for what you all do and even those who aren't here. We should never let our right hand know what our left hand is doing, right? There's a wisdom in that that God gives us in his word, right? Not for our earthly reward so we can gain the applause of men here on earth, but we do all that we do for the glory and the honor of Christ. What is a good work? A work that is born out of true faith, that is according to the law of God and for the glory of God. Let me say a word as we conclude. What about Christians? What about the works of Christians? Can we have perfect works in this world? The answer, of course, is no. We are Christians, we're redeemed by Christ's blood and his righteousness, and yet we are still imperfect. We are fallen in many ways, we still sin, we still go against the word of God. And so that should not, this teaching should not puff us up with pride. Right? But neither should it create a kind of negativity or despondency or depression, sadness. Well, if I can't have good works that are perfect, why bother? No, we have been renewed by God. And yet, although we still have a sinful nature operating in us, God accepts all that you do. You are his son, you are his daughter, God accepts what you do. Just like one of my children would spend two hours creating a work of art, and to me, it's not a masterpiece, it's not Vermeer or Rembrandt, and yet I accept it because he or she has done it for me. They have put the work in, and I understand their heart. And so it is with God and us, even more so. God accepts our imperfect and stained works, our imperfect prayers, our imperfect obedience, our tainted worship, all for the sake of Jesus Christ. because Jesus Christ is perfect, because Jesus Christ is righteous. Our imperfect life of imperfect works with weak faith, with mixed motives is taken by God and made acceptable through him, through his perfect life, his perfect prayers, his perfect obedience and righteousness. And this is, you see, part of the gospel of Jesus Christ, part of the glory of the gospel of Christ, that he is our atonement. If you're in Jesus, he is your atonement, which literally means he's your covering. He is your covering for your sins, as the Spirit of God draws you to God, right? He covers your sins with the blood of Christ. But now in Christ, is Jesus still your atonement? Of course. Jesus Christ covers our imperfect righteousness, our imperfect works. He covers all of us so that scripture says our very lives are hidden in him, covered by Christ. And this is, friends, the liberating truth of what it means to do good works. It should not be stifling, it should not create pride, nor paralysis in us. This is not an invitation to morbid introspection. Some of us might be more inclined to that, to navel gaze, to look inward intently, and to be consumed with our lives under a microscope. No, the doctrine of good works from God's word, rather, is to free us to serve God. It's meant to free you to serve God, as we'll sing momentarily from Psalter Hymn 500. The life of self-renouncing love is one of liberty, of the greatest freedom. You are now to serve God and do what he commands in his word with a true love for God, covered by Christ's blood, and all for his glory and honor. Amen. Let us pray. Our Father and our God, we thank you for Jesus Christ who has changed us and is changing us. We thank you, Father, that you have brought us to this new life, to this kingdom of life and of light now to serve you and to live for you. Heavenly Father, help us, encourage us, strengthen us for, Father, continual faithfulness to you in whatever we do, say, and think, that we would do it for your glory and honor according to your word. We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.