Posts Tagged ‘1 Samuel’

Why do we disobey God?  That’s a good question, right?  Why do our hearts lead us to go astray?  To go right when God says left?  To stay put when God says to move forward?  To move forward when God says stay put?

This is what we looked at yesterday at RiverStone in our worship gathering in the Word.  Saul disobeyed.  1 Samuel 15 gives us a fantastic story of a fateful disobedience.  God said to Saul, “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.” (1 Samuel 15:3)

What was Saul’s response?  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.” (1 Samuel 15:9)

So the question is – Why do we disobey God?  Why did Saul NOT do what God asked him to do?  Why do we do the same thing?

It’s a matter of value.  Disobedience always is about devaluing God.  It’s a matter of thinking highly of something other than God.  Assigning a greater value to other things, far and above God and his Word.

Today, let’s focus on our first question from yesterday:  Do we value God enough for Him to be the Lord of our lives?

Think about it.  Saul wasn’t allowing God to be his boss.  He devalued God and it led to immediate disobedience.  What he wanted was far more important (value) than what God desired (valued).  How are we doing with this Lordship thing?  Are we valuing God enough, high enough?  Here’s the litmus test for us:  How is our obedience to God’s Word and direction?  If we’re following through, we’re valuing God far and above.  If we’re not, we’re holding something else in the place of God.  We’re holding in higher esteem the creation instead of the Creator.  And ultimately, this is idolatry. And we all commit this sin.  And this is bad news!

BUT…here’s the good news.  Even though we’ve all made the mistake and sinned by treasuring creation over Creator, God forgives us for committing this idolatristic sin.  He sent his Son to show us the ultimate picture of our infinitely worthy Creator.  In Christ, our Savior, our Redeemer, our Deliverer, our perfector, our Victor over sin, death and hell, we find the glory of God supremely on display.  When we place faith in Him and his work on the cross instead of ourselves, and our religious good works and morality, we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of the greater treasure – Christ!

Dig Deeper,

PC

I am continuing to resonate with the truth that Chris Gatlyn spoke of on Sunday to us RiverStoner’s from the David and Goliath account in 1 Samuel 17.  (If you didn’t get a chance to check out Chris’ message, please visit http://www.riverstonechurch.org/media-2/messages and it should be up in the next couple days.)

One of the truths we saw was that we can make a difference in bringing glory to God by being who God has created us to be.  I have to admit, one of my biggest struggles is being myself at times.  I wanna be a great preacher like Chandler, Platt, Spurgeon, Piper, MacArthur, and the great communicators and teachers of God’s Word.  I listen to these men and want to adopt certain things they do and ultimately I’m drawn in to being someone that I’m not.

David wanted to be used by God and was willing to risk his life to bring God glory.  Listen to what the Scripture says:

“Then Saul clothed David with his armor.  He put a helmet on him with a coast of mail, and David strapped his sword over his armor.  And he tried in vain to go, for he had not tested them.  Then David said to Saul, ‘I cannot go with these, for I have not tested them.’  So David put them off.  Then he took his staff in his hand and chose five smooth stones from the brook and put them in his shepherd’s pouch.”

Notice HOW David went to serve the Lord and make much of God.  He didn’t go in the armor of Saul, rather he went in his own.  The armor of Saul was too big and bulky for him. It worked for Saul.  It didn’t work for David because it wasn’t fit for David.

We become ineffective when we get all caught up in who others are and compare ourselves to their strengths.  Our enemy uses this against us to make us ungrateful for what God has given to us. We are capable because of who God has made us to be.  Some of us may wear armor, while others of us may use a shepherd’s staff.  Whatever God has given to you, listen, GOD HAS GIVEN IT TO YOU!  That’s powerful!

So a couple of questions for us:

• How has God created you and me?
• Are we confident in the clothes God has given to us?  The experiences and attributes God has gifted to us?
• How does the truth that God has gifted us with certain qualities and capabilities motivate us to move out for the glory of God?

Dig Deeper!

PC

Hey RiverStone and Friends,

We covered a bunch in our time of worship yesterday at RS!  Can you believe we walked through basically 1 Samuel through Isaiah 9?  It’s my prayer that as we took the important time to see this Biblical Story, that you see the backdrop of the greatness of the child that we celebrate on Christmas…the Christ-child!  I have had many people expressing thanksgiving to our worship service for leading them to a greater understanding of this Christmas celebration.

So let’s dig a bit deeper in our study this week: we saw to begin with yesterday people of God were not governed by a president, a queen, a king, an emperor, a king or any other sovereign from Genesis through 1 Samuel 7.  God was their sovereign…We come to 1 Samuel 8 and what we see is the people of God were scared for their future because the judges God was using to help facilitate life and right living as His people were not going to be good news…so what did they do?  Pray?  Nope.  Plead with God?  Nope.  They asked for a king instead…Basically what they were saying was, “We don’t want you to govern us anymore God…we want a king like all the other nations.”  Bottom Line – they rejected God as their king.  Imagine this – the people of God rejected God as king.  Why would they do that?  What would motivate them to reject the creator God for a created being?  Fear.  They couldn’t predict God, see God, and would trust God to lead them.  Don’t knock ‘em too hard, we do the same thing…

So God allows them to put their trust in a human king instead of the King of kings and watch what happens:

• Saul anointed King…Saul fails as King
• David anointed King…David fails as King
• Solomon anointed King…Solomon fails as King – do we see a pattern here?

Let’s ask ourselves some questions from Solomon’s life as king…

• How did Solomon’s kingship start out?  See 1 Kings 3:1-14
• What did God tell Solomon to abstain from?  See 1 Kings 9:1-7
• Why would God tell Solomon to abstain from this?  See Deuteronomy 7:1-4
• What did Solomon choose to do?  Stay faithful to God or strive forward in rebellion?  See 1 Kings 11:1-6

Let’s ask ourselves one question to consider:

• Are we worshiping God alone or are we trusting in other gods?  Who is worthy of our worship?

We’ll continue throughout this week to walk towards Isaiah 9 together, looking at why the child being promised to be born to us is such good news!

PC