Abounding Grace

Pastor Ed Taylor: Next on Abounding Grace. Repentance, which would lead to fruits of repentance, a changed life. We don't see that in the children of Israel and too many times we don't see that in people either.

You have a lot of remorse before the judge, a lot of remorse in jail, but not for the crime, but for getting caught. I'm sorry, Judge. What are you sorry for? What did I do again?

When you face a problem, pray, and when you sin, admit it. The quickest way to forgiveness and restoration is to say, "I sinned, I blew it, will you forgive me? I won't do it again. It was wrong."

Guest (Male): We are thrilled to share the next half hour together with you as we open and study the Word and seek to grow by God's abounding grace. Today, Pastor Ed Taylor visits 1st Samuel chapter 12, and the flow of this chapter is confession, repentance, and prayer. How great would that be if it was the banner over our lives? It can be, and we'll see how. Here's Pastor Ed with Abounding Grace.

Pastor Ed Taylor: Samuel here affirms his honesty, fidelity, and fairness in his leadership. He didn't cheat people, he didn't steal from people, but he led them with love. And I would just say, Lord, please multiply good, godly leaders in your church, ones that can stand with integrity. And that's what he does with verse 6.

Samuel said to the people, "It is the Lord who raised up Moses and Aaron and who brought your fathers up from the land of Egypt." He's going to give them a little bit of history lesson. "Now therefore, stand still, that I may reason with you before the Lord concerning all the righteous acts of the Lord which he did to you and your fathers."

Now let's just pause there for a second because I want you to look for a couple of things. Number one, you'll notice that when Samuel gives a history of what God's dealings with his people, he gives God the credit and not man for raising up godly leadership. We touched on that a little bit last time in Psalm 73. Remember, God raises up one, he puts down another.

Samuel is very clear because he knows what he's dealing with. He's dealing with a nation that has rejected God and asked for a king to trust man over God. In his message here, that may be the last time he gets the full acknowledgment of the people in this position, he says, "I want you to remember Moses and Aaron, God raised them up." And that's going to be the pattern in this talk. But not just that, notice in verse 7, the phrase "stand still."

It's a technical phrase in the Hebrew language. It takes us into the courtroom. By using this phrase that's translated in the English "stand still," Samuel is telling them this is serious stuff. Listen. Stop what you're doing and pay attention to me. It's almost as if you could say he's saying you're on trial here. He's sternly speaking to the people, warning them about their decision.

He's reminding the people that God has been gracious and faithful, but the nation of Israel have been faithless and disobedient. Verse 8: "When Jacob had gone into Egypt and your fathers cried out to the Lord, then the Lord sent Moses and Aaron who brought your fathers out of Egypt and made them dwell in this place." Which by the way, a side note here, just something to look at. In verse 8, when it says that Jacob cried out to the Lord, the Lord sent.

God answers your prayers. Your crying out to the Lord right now, you can trust that God is going to send an answer your way. You can trust him to answer on your behalf. You can trust him that he hears your cry. Jacob cried out. God answers the nation. He sends Moses and Aaron, brought your fathers out of Egypt and made them dwell in this place. "And when they forgot the Lord their God, he sold them into the hand of Sisera, commander of the army of Hazor, into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand of the king of Moab, and they fought against them."

Then they cried out to the Lord and said, "We have sinned because we have forsaken the Lord and served the Baals and Ashtoreths. Now deliver us from the hand of our enemies and we will serve you." And the Lord sent Jerubbaal, or that was another name, remember, for Gideon. He's kind of going through the history, the recent history of the judges, going all the way back to Moses and Aaron, but he's getting highlights just like you do when you're telling a story. You're going to give the highlights to make the point. That's what he's doing here.

He sent Jephthah, he sent Samuel, and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and you dwelt in safety. God gave them the Promised Land, protected them from their enemies. They had fruitful fields and flocks and possessions and herds and growing families. And yet the point is key for Samuel that God has always provided a leader when the nation needed one. Verse 12: "And when you saw that Nahash the king of the Ammonites came against you, you said to me, 'No, but a king shall reign over us,' when the Lord your God was your king."

"No, but a king shall reign over us," when the Lord your God was your king. Now therefore, verse 13, "here is the king whom you have chosen and whom you have desired. Take note, the Lord has set a king over you. If you fear the Lord and serve him and obey his voice, and do not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then both you and the king who reigns over you will continue following the Lord your God. However, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you as it was against your fathers."

God carries over his faithfulness even into their recent victory that was just experienced in chapter 11. How should they have responded to the goodness and faithfulness and careful love of God? Repentance. They should have confessed their sin, their unbelief, and trusted in God, but instead they attacked. They asked for a king. They asked for a man.

You'll recall in our study in Romans, would you turn over to chapter 2 of Romans with me? You'll recall if you were with us during our study in the book of Romans. If you weren't with us, I'll go through it again with you. But this beautiful verse here. The response to the goodness and faithfulness of God should always be repentance. It should always be a humility. It should always be a sense of, "God, you're so good to me. You're so faithful."

And in Romans chapter 2, notice in verse 4, Paul says, "Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, his forbearance, his longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But in accordance with the hardness and your impenitent heart, you are treasuring up for yourselves wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each one according to his deeds."

And even though they rejected God, God did not reject them, this nation of Israel. Even though they had made bad decisions, God has not thrown them to the curb. Not all was lost. According to Samuel, back in 1st Samuel, if the people would fear and serve the Lord and obey his voice according to verse 14, then God would lead them. But in verse 15 they're warned, "If you do not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you, as it was against your fathers."

Strong words filled with beautiful promises. Then in between here, before we get into the depth of repentance in a second, look at this. He demonstrates his goodness to them right there, right in front of them. This is an amazing section. We can't read over it just kind of glossing over it. In verse 16, it says, "Now therefore, stand and see this great thing which the Lord will do before your eyes. Is today not the wheat harvest?" which was the time of no rain, dryness.

Which often will be a type and a picture of the believer in rebellion, or the believer in a time of just not obeying the Lord. This is a time of dryness. And it's a very practical picture. And he says, "I will call to the Lord and he will send thunder and rain that you may perceive and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in the sight of the Lord in asking a king for yourselves." So Samuel called to the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day, and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel.

Wow. He goes down and establishes his integrity and then he gets down to the nitty-gritty. You guys, you're following in the footsteps of those that have gone before you. God's history with you has been graciousness and forgiveness and patience. And every time you got in trouble, God was there for you. Every time you needed help, God sent that to you. Every time you cried out, every time a person cried out to God, God sent the help.

God just gave you victory. That's why we're here in Gilgal, celebrating the victory of God, his victory in our lives. Here we are, and you could even picture here we are standing on dry ground, dusty, dirty ground. But I want to show you something. I want to establish my words. I'm going to call down, I'm going to ask God to call down rain and thunder to show you as he softens the soil, as he reveals his faithfulness, as he gives you a tangible taste of goodness right now, not just history.

And isn't that how God works now? We have all these stories of God's faithfulness, but God's showing his faithfulness to us right now, right in this moment. Just in very simple things like your breath. You're taking a breath, God's given you a breath and another breath and another breath. And he set your body up in such a way that even if you said, "Well, I don't want God's breath," and you started to hold your breath, you'd pass out and start breathing again because God loves you so much.

And here the rain falls. And it stirred up emotions, but not repentance. It stirred up all these emotions, but not repentance. They fear God, and you go, "Oh, yes, yes." No. No repentance. No heart change. Great fear come among the people. They say in verse 19, "Pray for your servants to the Lord your God, that we may not die." That's not repentance. That's self-centeredness. We don't want to die.

Samuel just told them if they obey the Lord, the Lord's going to take care of them. But God was just so gracious to them and we don't want to die. We've added all these sins to our, we've added to all our sins the evil of asking a king for ourselves. And then verse 20 says, "Please, we don't want a king anymore, God. We want you. We don't want Saul." Is that in your Bible? If it is, you got a really messed-up translation because it's not in my Bible.

Samuel just gives them words of comfort. "Do not fear, you've done all this wickedness, yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. Don't turn aside. Don't go after empty things which cannot profit or deliver, for they're nothing." They didn't say, "We're wrong. We'll take God as our king. We were wrong. What were we thinking?" They said what the equivalent it is today: "I'm sorry." I'm sorry.

Now certainly at times I am sure that the words "I'm sorry" come from a genuine, sincere heart, but they're not as powerful as words "Will you forgive me for what I've done to you?" That's repentance. Read Psalm 51 if you want to see the heart of repentance. I know David was busted, but hey, he was busted by the goodness of God. And you know what it did? It broke him down and brought great repentance, Psalm 51.

David was never the same. His family was rocked by the consequences of his sin, but he did come back. And for that we're grateful. For that we're so glad to see. There are a lot of times when people acknowledge that they've done wrong that there's no repentance with it. They acknowledge it, but they don't repent. And you'll even hear things like this, and it's just like you hear it a lot of times you hear it with your kids, but it could be you're in a relationship right now where you've heard this.

Where you're in a difficult discussion and maybe there's even a mediator there to help and you go, "You just say you're sorry. Just say you're sorry." So they'll come out and say something like, "I'm sorry if I ever did anything that might have hurt you and made you crazy," or whatever. Some weird, like, what kind of apology? What is that? You're sorry that maybe you did some? Why don't you just say it?

"Will you forgive me for the things I did to you?" They were wrong before God and they were wrong before you, and I'm sorry. Repentance, which would lead to fruits of repentance, a changed life. We don't see that in the children of Israel and too many times we don't see that in people either. You have a lot of remorse before the judge, a lot of remorse in jail, but not for the crime, but for getting caught.

I'm sorry, Judge. What are you sorry for? What did I do again? When you face a problem, pray, and when you sin, admit it. The quickest way to forgiveness and restoration is to say, "I sinned, I blew it, will you forgive me? I won't do it again. It was wrong." The Bible says in Proverbs chapter 28, verse 13, "He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy."

There are some people in their pride and stiff necks that refuse to repent. They aren't willing to admit they were wrong and change directions. One of the hardest things to say sometimes is, "Will you forgive me?" Now, should born-again believers repent? Because you know there are those within the body of Christ that say once you're a believer you never sin again, or you never have to repent, and I want you to know that's not true.

Believers repent. Believers still sin. Now, the glorious thing about the redeeming power of grace, not only grace for salvation, which we would call justifying grace, but also grace to become more Christ-like, we call that sanctifying grace. One of the beautiful things about grace is that although we don't become sinless, guess what we do become? A person that sins less. A lot less.

Some of your lives are so radically different than who you were that you can truly say, "I'm a new creation in Christ. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things become new in you." Well, I don't believe it. Well, just talk to the guys I went to school with, man, they'll tell you. Talk to my mom. She's shocked. Why? Because you are not sinless, but you certainly sin less.

Because you're becoming more and more Christ-like, your mind is being transformed. You're being changed from the inside out. You're not just dealing with all the actions. You're not just dealing with actions where you're just handing all the outside actions, but never touching the heart. But no, you've opened yourself up. You've been born again. God has taken your heart of stone out, replaced it with a heart of flesh, and now in your life you live by the power of God living in you.

And the Bible says in 1st John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." If anyone in the children, any leader in the children of Israel here would just repented and said they blew it and, "You're right, Samuel, you're right, you're right, you're right," who knows the direction that the Scriptures might have taken? Who knows the direction that your life might take if you choose to repent now?

Humble yourself. Deny yourself. And not settle in a place. Turn over to 2nd Corinthians now, chapter 7. 2nd Corinthians chapter 7, and it wasn't too long ago that we looked at these very passages. We looked at the distinction between godly sorrow and human sorrow. Godly sorrow, a true, true godly sorrow and a worldly sorrow, a human sorrow. Pick up with me, please, in verse 9 of 2nd Corinthians chapter 7.

He says, "Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing. For godly sorrow produces repentance to salvation, not to be regretted; but sorrow of the world produces death." And we can add, you will regret it. Godly sorrow doesn't lead to regret. Worldly sorrow does.

And Paul was telling the Corinthians there are two types of sorrow to look out for when we're dealing with issues in our lives: godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. Or we could say spiritual sorrow and fleshly or carnal sorrow. Because we all have, we're emotional people, so we're going to have some emotion over the difficulties of life, and especially over our own sin, and especially if God will send a Nathan or a situation where it's revealed.

Like, whoa, wait a minute. Wait a minute. This is the reality of my life. What am I going to do? This is wrong. Worldly sorrow tends to hover around the immediate. And I'm sure if we were to survey those in jail today, or those suffering the consequences of their sin, the most that would be very sorry for their actions, sorry that they got caught, sorry for the pain that's happening, but not necessarily sorry for what they did, just that they were caught.

But godly sorrow tends to progress into the spiritual realm. There are many of the same feelings involved with godly sorrow as worldly sorrow. A lot of the same feelings of regret and the same feelings of regre, I don't know how many times you've felt this, but looking back on my life, I will say this now. My parents used to say it and I used to blow it off, but I totally see it now. If I knew then what I know now, I would have totally never gone down that road.

I would have never got involved in that stuff. I would have listened to my parents. I would have listened to my teachers, to my guidance counselors, and every other person that God put in my way to warn me as a kid over my kindergarten teacher all the way up until I got saved. God put people in my life to tell me, "Don't do it. Don't do it. It's not good. Don't do it." And in all my own consequences and it just build and build and build and build.

Obviously, godly sorrow leads not toward destruction but toward life. And it comes from the Spirit of God, a response to the conviction of the Holy Spirit that will bring us to godly sorrow that will ultimately lead us. How do we know that we're experiencing the right sorrow over sin? We're repentant. We stop it. We cut it off. We make things right. We restore. We build up. We run away.

We love justice. We love mercy. And we walk humbly with our God. You're in that realm, you know it's godly sorrow. If indeed the opposite is taking place where hardness comes. The thing with hardness is that it only gets harder. You might even think, "I'm as hard as I can get." No way. You haven't even tasted hardness yet. Hardness builds on hardness builds on hardness, and it's just all worldly sorrow.

Godly sorrow says, "I realize that I've sinned against God." Godly sorrow says, "I realize that I've sinned against you." Godly sorrow says, "I realize that I've done the wrong things." Godly sorrow says, "I realize I've hurt people. I realize I've been living selfishly. I realize I've not been considerate of the needs of others at all. I realize that I've begun to look at myself honestly." Godly sorrow, I begin to sorrow over how violent, wicked, and evil are the things that I'm doing and the thoughts that I'm thinking.

Godly sorrow is when God's Spirit begins to work in my heart and to reveal the truth about myself because the Bible says in Jeremiah 17:9 that "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?" God knows our heart. Sometimes I don't even know my own heart. I don't even know how deep things are in my own life.

I need God to reveal it to me. And he will. And he does. And here we have a group of people that even in strong words and the abundant blessing of God, the thunder and the rain to feed their crops and to soften the ground, wasn't enough for them. All they're worried about is, "We don't want to die."

And Samuel again in verse 20, "Don't fear, you've done all this wickedness, don't turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. Don't turn aside, for then you would go after empty things which cannot profit or deliver, for they're nothing. For the Lord," verse 22, "will not forsake his people for his great name's sake, because it's pleased the Lord to make you his people."

He loves you. He loves you in any condition you are. It might have broken fellowship, it might be a heavy thing for you to live under the consequences, but it doesn't stop God from loving you. God's love is eternal, and he can't love you in this moment any more than he's ever loved you or ever will. And in Psalm 103, the Bible describes God as looking at us with pity or compassion over our humanity. Not judgmental, not condemnation, but rather, "I have so much more for you."

Guest (Male): What you heard today on Abounding Grace is part of Pastor Ed Taylor's series taken from 1st Samuel. You can hear it again online at aboundinggraceradio.com or wherever you get your podcasts. We've also got an app that makes listening to Pastor Ed easy to do on your mobile device. Just search for the Calvary Church app in the App Store.

And we'd really like to hear from you. It's helpful to know how these studies are impacting your life, and that would be a real encouragement to Pastor Ed and the team. And if you're in need of prayer, please leave your requests as well. There's a place to contact us at aboundinggraceradio.com.

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How do Old Testament and New Testament prophecies fit together? Why can you trust a literal interpretation of the Scriptures? These questions and more are answered in The End Times in Chronological Order. Call us at 877-30-GRACE or visit our e-store at calvaryco.store. And come back next time when we'll continue our study of 1st Samuel with Pastor Ed. That's right here on Abounding Grace.