Abounding Grace

Guest (Male): God's warnings aren't to be despised but gladly embraced. Pastor Ed Taylor on why he gives them to us in the first place.

Pastor Ed Taylor: Samuel's warning them, it would be good for them to heed the warning. God warns us about things in our lives, about sin in particular, because he wants us to avoid the pain of sin, and he wants us to avoid the pain of consequences, and he wants us to enjoy this life as a testimony of his faithfulness. So he warns us. He warns us.

Guest (Male): As we open 1 Samuel chapter 8 today on Abounding Grace, God's people are about to demand a king that's not God. You see, they weren't content with God as their king, and you'll soon see what happens when you get what you want instead of what God wants.

Pastor Ed Taylor continues through the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel today. If you'll recall, we left off last time in chapter 8, and remember the people were calling for a king. God, of course, had anticipated this.

Pastor Ed Taylor: This is back in 1 Samuel now. This thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to judge us." You think you'd be displeased? I know he's taking it personally, because we'll see in a moment, but I don't think it's just personal. He cares about the nation. He cares. Do you guys really understand what you want? You want a king? You don't want me? You don't want my sons? I'm still alive. I know I'm old, but I'm still here.

And he does the right thing, of course. He says, "Samuel prayed to the Lord." And the Lord said to Samuel, check this out, "Heed the voice of the people in all that they say. Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they've rejected me that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day I brought them out of Egypt even to this day, with which they forsaken me and served other gods, so are they doing to you also. Now, therefore, heed their voice. However, you shall solemnly forewarn them and show them the behavior of the king who will reign over them."

Guest (Male): You know how when you pray and you just want God to answer all your prayers? Do you really? What if you're wrong? Do you want him to answer all your prayers the way you want them? Or would you like God to overrule you sometimes?

Just tuck that in the back of your mind when you're praying tonight. And go ahead and include it in your prayer times as they go. "God, here's all this, but overrule me, because if I'm wrong, I don't want you to give me what I want, because I really want what you want. Don't give me what I want."

Pastor Ed Taylor: I think back in other episodes in the life and the history of the children of Israel where this wasn't the first time that Israel rejected God. They rejected him at Sinai in Exodus chapter 32. They rejected him in Numbers chapter 14, the whole wilderness wandering. In Psalm 106—would you jot this down? Or turn there so you can see it in your own Bible.

Psalm 106. See, the Jewish leaders here had no faith. They took things into their own hands, and God says they're rejecting him. If you would have asked them, I don't think they would have said they're rejecting God, because they didn't have God's perspective.

God's perspective was, "Hey, Samuel, it's not about you, man." Jesus would say the same thing, that a prophet's without honor except in his own country. They're rejecting him. That's why when you're sharing the gospel with people that you love, in your family, you're sharing the truth and you're rejected, it hurts. It takes a personal turn, but you can almost hear heaven say, "Hey, they're not rejecting you. They're rejecting me." And then you say, "Oh, but it still hurts." And God says, "I know. I know." Look at this in Psalm 106, verse 14.

It speaks of the children of Israel in the wilderness wandering and says, "But they lusted exceedingly in the wilderness and tested God in the desert." This is Psalm 106, verse 14. "And he gave them their request." And you're like, "Amen, God, thank you for giving me my request." But he sent leanness into their soul.

God's answer to Samuel is, "Look, I know all about this rejection. It's a pattern. And you know, Samuel, they're not rejecting you, even though you are taking it personally, even though it does hurt. What you're witnessing, Samuel, with my people is what I've seen all the way back. This is my relationship with them. This is the human condition."

He says, "Give them what they want, but warn them." Isn't that like the role of the pastor? You give the church the Word of God and the service and serve them well, but warn them. Warn them of the decisions and warn them. Put the choices before them. I think of Elijah. He went through the same thing. "Choose you this day whom you will serve." Elijah says, "How long will you falter between two opinions?" It seems to be a pattern. Jesus says, "You're either for me or against me." Warn them. Warn them.

There'll be times when I'm in the process of, not just me, but the pastoral team and you guys, just opening the Word, where I'm laying before a couple or a family, "This is the way it is and this is what the Bible says and this is the answer." And then you'll see that they're just not tracking and they're just not accepting and they're just not receiving.

There are times where the Holy Spirit says, "They're just about ready to leave your office, Ed. You better warn them. Warn them of how they came in and how they're leaving." It's like God would say, "You have that sense of where you've covered the topic and you've opened the Word, but warn them, because they're walking out worse than when they walked in. They're walking out of your office, Ed, worse than when they first walked in. You need to warn them. You need to warn them. You need to warn them." And that's what Samuel was called to do. "You need to warn them. Forewarn them. Forewarn them what they're going to get when they get a king."

Verse 10. So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who asked him for a king. And he said, "This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you. He'll take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots, to be his own horsemen. Some will run before his chariots. He'll appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties. He'll set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots."

"He'll take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. He'll take the best of your fields and vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his servants." Verse 15. "He'll take a tenth of your grain." Another word for that is, "He'll tax you." He'll take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, he'll give it to his officers and his servants. He'll take your male servants and female servants, your finest young men, your donkeys, put them to his work. He'll take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you've chosen for yourselves, and the Lord will not hear you in that day.

God wanted Israel to know the problems that come with a king. When they thought they were solving problems, in reality, they were replacing problems with problems, bigger problems. All of this section is to imply that they didn't live with this kind of tax. They didn't live with this kind of bondage. They had a relationship through the judges with God directly. They didn't have to go through all this. And this taxes and stuff was in addition to their tithes. This had nothing to do with spiritually. This was purely governmental. They were asking for a government like all the other nations.

But they missed it, which so often we can do when we're discouraged and we lean on our own understanding. Many today do the same thing when faced with problems; they take things into their own hands and make things worse. I'm reminded—and how can we not be reminded of taking things in our own hands and making them worse? How can we not think of Sarai and Abram, given the promise of God and then waiting and waiting and waiting?

And they became impatient. And they began to look at the reality of life. They began to look at the facts. You have to understand, Abram and Sarai made their decision based on the facts. They were old, beyond childbearing. "Yeah, I know God gave me a promise, but have you seen my body lately? I can barely walk."

And all of the other things that go along with knowing your body and your age and understanding the biological clock. They were knowledgeable about that. And the reality and the logic and the facts of the situation overruled the spiritual promise of God. And they took things into their own hands, came up with the dumbest idea that could possibly be brought into a marriage. "I've got a handmade, Abram. What do you think? Why don't you go have sex with her and she can bear the promise of God?"

This would have been a great opportunity for Abram to say, "I am a man of God. I will not do that." But instead, "Sure." Here's something that you may need to understand. That was culturally acceptable. That was a culturally acceptable option and alternative when there were no children. It's just what the world did. So today, we would translate that into, "Hey, you know what? I've got a spiritual problem. I'm waiting forever. I know how to fix this. It's what everybody else does when they have this problem. I think I'll fix that, and I'll fulfill God's promise for him."

And of course, that child that was conceived, his name, Ishmael, in conflict with the promise of God that came later, Isaac. They were in conflict. They were in conflict from that moment on, caused conflict in the home, cause conflict between countries. The conflict is still going on as I'm speaking this second between Ishmael and Isaac. Why? Because of impatience.

It was so much so that somewhere around Genesis 17, Abram says, "You know what, God? Take my Ishmael. Take my Ishmael. We don't need your promise. Take my Ishmael. We've got it taken care of." And God said, "No. He is not the child of promise." And now they live with the consequences of that bad decision. Israel is repeating the same thing here. It's the same thing, different circumstances.

The promise of God always supersedes the act of man, even with logic, even with knowledge. That's why if you haven't already, you really need to make Proverbs chapter 3, 5, and 6 one of the verses you memorize this year. I hope you memorize the Bible. There's been such a de-emphasis on that over the years.

We give you verses at the beginning of every month for you to memorize. We give you that reading plan, and then Jason's developed into a prayer plan, and then on the flip side of it, there's the different verses on the back that we want you to memorize. If you put three verses in your heart a month, you're going to have 36 verses in your heart by the end of the year.

Remember when Peter dropped that Bible study on the 3,000 people that were baptized that day when they saw the day of Pentecost? Everybody was speaking in tongues, and they thought everybody was drunk. Do you know how he shared that dynamic, powerful, anointed message? Off the top of his head. He didn't say, "Wait a minute. I need to get my scrolls. Oh, no, I don't got my scrolls. Where are my scrolls?"

Well, people couldn't own scrolls; they were very expensive. So even if he did have one, it was probably only a portion or one book of the Old Testament. It's not like he could go, "I gotta go find my Joel scroll." No. He shared Joel because it was in his heart. The prophecy of God pouring out His Spirit from the prophet Joel was being fulfilled right there in Acts chapter 2.

And so for you, with the access that we have to the Scriptures so much, you may just stop the discipline of memorizing because technology's changed. The old generation, we don't need to memorize anymore. I got the iPad. What do I need to memorize for? I got an iPad. It's on my phone. I've got an iPhone or some other thing that they call a phone. I don't know really what it is if it's not an iPhone.

I'm just messing with you. Just make sure you guys are still with me, because I get a sense that this is a convicting thing I'm sharing with you right now. You should see your faces as some of you assess, "You know, honey, I haven't memorized a verse in years." And so I just want to encourage you. Go down to the Walmart or wherever you shop and get some 3x5 cards and just do it old school.

Write it out on the 3x5 card and put it in your pocket and memorize it throughout the day. And then file that card in a little something or other and keep them or put them on a paperclip and watch the stack continue to fill.

But you'll see as the stack fills, your heart will enlarge because you're filling your life with the Scriptures so that if one day you don't have a Bible or one day your battery is no longer working on your phone or your tablet, you have the Word of God in your heart. The Holy Spirit will bring to your remembrance what you've been taught.

If the well is dry within you, then the Holy Spirit has nothing from which to draw from. That's why we have you take notes or we encourage you to take notes within a Bible study, whether it's this time or you're listening on the radio. Why? Because that helps you to remember what was said. And then there are statistics of how you remember: what's spoken, what's seen, and what's reviewed.

By the time you're done with review, it's a really high number percentage of what you can remember. And then you can do what I do, and I like to go back through my old notebooks from years ago and just see what the Lord was teaching me when I was a chump new believer. Didn't know what I was doing, thinking I knew everything and I really knew nothing. And the Lord was so gracious with me and so patient.

I start comparing my notebooks, and as I start comparing my notebooks, I'm like, "Whoa, I'm still a chump, but in a different way." God's working on another part of my life. He's refining this and I find that He speaks to me the same way. And He has for 20 plus years. And oftentimes, He's speaking to me about the same thing, whether He's saying, "Well done, good and faithful servant" or "Ed, you got some growth areas. I want you to depend upon me."

Because when the temptation comes and you're faced with the facts, what's before you? The destruction of your marriage, that's just the facts. The bill that just came in, that's just the facts. The light that flashes on the van that they parked in the median, that's just the facts. The reality of what's happening at work, the difficulty in the family. When you're faced with the facts, you don't want to respond to the facts because you may make a mistake. "Give me a king. We don't have any good leaders here. We need a king."

Do you really? Was that from the Lord? You need a king? The reason why you don't have a king, Israel, is because you're different from every other nation on the planet. That's why you don't have a king, because you're special. You're the apple of my eye. I'm going to deal with you differently. I'm going to directly appoint people so that I can relate to you directly, Israel.

And you need a king? Abram and Sarai, I promised you a kid. You don't think I know how old you are? You don't think I know I'm going to make you wait for it? You don't think I know I'm about in just a few years—and God didn't drop this on them because they couldn't handle it—but God could have said, "In just a few years, I'm going to find a young teenage girl that's betrothed to be married. And she's not going to have any relations with her husband. And she's going to show up pregnant. I'm going to do that in just a couple thousand years. Just jot it down, Abram, you'll see."

You don't think I can create a child in your wife's womb? You think you can do it better than me? And you look at your life and you can see when you're faced with the facts, you often revert to human responses because it is the facts. You don't understand, you see it this way instead of waiting on the Lord. Why? Because we'll renew our strength and God will fulfill His promises. Would you turn over to Galatians chapter 6? Galatians chapter 6.

So we don't want a bunch of Ishmaels running around. We want Israel. "Governed by God" is what that means. And in Galatians chapter 6, it's important to heed the warnings of God. Samuel's warning them, it would be good for them to heed the warning.

God warns us about things in our lives, about sin in particular, because He wants us to avoid the pain of sin and He wants us to avoid the pain of consequences and He wants us to enjoy this life as a testimony of His faithfulness. So He warns us. He warns us.

And He says, notice what the Bible says in Galatians 6, verse 7, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life."

That's a warning and an encouragement at the same time. We're faced with decisions every day. What will I do with my freedom in Jesus? How will I use it? How will I respond to this warning? Paul narrows it down to two choices: Will I respond in the Spirit or will I respond in the flesh?

Some of these situations we're facing, they cause emotional and physiological responses. Your heart starts beating more. Sometimes if you're in a discouraged place, the blood flow slows down. Your heart rate slows down. Your body starts to shut down in discouraging times. Your mind starts to think strange things. There's physical responses to things in life.

And if we're not careful, we'll feed that with the flesh, because you're feeling it, you're feeling it, you're feeling it. And I don't just mean some of the simple decisions. "Should I go get drunk?" or "Should I go live with my girlfriend?" Those are actually some of the easier decisions to respond in the Spirit.

But it's a sobering passage. Every thought, every act, every word brings with it a blessing or a cursing. And when it comes to our relationship with God the Father, you can't just decide to go cut across the Bible and expect to come out ahead.

You can't say, "Well, I'm a Christian, I love God, but me and my boyfriend are living together. It's no big deal." Or, "I can get drunk sometimes." And, "Hey, man, it's logical and it's legal, I can just go smoke pot and everything." "I don't care if I stumble someone else. It's my freedom. It's my life. I can just yell and scream and break things. I can do whatever I want." No, be careful if I'm speaking to you right now. Be careful.

Because what you sow is exactly what you'll reap. And so don't be deceived that you think you can sow to the flesh and get spiritual benefits from it. It's not going to happen. But also be encouraged that if you sow to the Spirit, you will get spiritual benefits.

When you sow to the Spirit, you're not going to feed your flesh. Like so you're angry, but you get into the Word and you pray. God's not going to make you more angry, make you lose control. You're not going to hear from God, "Lord, I'm just feeling like this, I'm feeling like this." And God's not from heaven going, "Whoa, you have permission. Just go take them out."

No, He's going to comfort you and calm you and minister to you and reveal Scripture to you or just in that time renew your strength. But listen, what you sow, that's exactly what you'll reap. And if you live for eternity, you see the bigger picture, you'll sow to the Spirit. Everything you do and touch will last for eternity. So, hey, heed the warnings of God.

Guest (Male): With that encouragement to heed the warnings of God, we'll draw today's Abounding Grace with Pastor Ed to a close. Catch a replay when you visit aboundinggraceradio.com or listen wherever you get your podcasts and at oneplace.com. And if you haven't already downloaded our free mobile app, you can do that. The Calvary Church app is a great way to listen to the very latest content from Pastor Ed.

Here in the month of August, we've picked out an excellent book written by Bob Hoekstra called *How to Counsel God's Way*. Now, this book is a call for God's people to return to Jesus as our wonderful counselor so that we avoid the pitfalls of following after man's wisdom and trust the Lord Jesus for his reliable riches that are already ours in Christ.

We'll send you a copy with our thanks for a gift of $25 or more to Abounding Grace. Please remember it is through your financial support that we're able to come to you day by day on this station and others like it. Your gift, whatever the size, would be greatly appreciated and put to good use.

Request your book today by calling us toll-free at 877-30-GRACE. Again, 877-30-GRACE. You can also order the book online at calvaryco.store. If you'd rather not have the book but still want to make a donation, that can be done rather easily at aboundinggraceradio.com. Pastor Ed, from time to time, we're sharing listener emails here at the close of our programs, and you have one there you can share with us today?

Pastor Ed Taylor: We got a note in today, love this so much. "I'm encouraged every time I listen. And I'm also reminded by the Holy Spirit to pray for the precious people that are listening in." We get notes like this all the time, I'm so grateful. Some are much longer, of course, some are detailing how God has used His Word in their lives.

I want to let you know that I listened to Christian radio as a new believer virtually every moment of every day. There was a station in Southern California called K-WAVE, and I was listening to my pastor, to Pastor Raul Ries, Skip Heitzig, to Pastor Ray Bentley, and on the list goes. It was my seminary in the car. I was learning Bible every moment of every day. I had these long commutes.

And let me just say, I didn't write in to appreciate the pastors till much later. And I wish I would have. I wish I would have just jotted a note down. There was maybe one or two times that I did it, but I could have done it so much more. And I know now on the other side what a great encouragement that is.

So thank you. That's basically what I want to say: thank you. I know that you are using this radio station as a source of growth and encouragement, very much like I did and I still do.

But I want to thank you for those of you that take the time to write me a note, send a little gift, and I don't just mean financially supporting the ministry, but sometimes I'll get a little Dodger trinket or a hat or something that is given just as a gift. Thank you. Thank you for thinking of me and my family and our church family. It's a blessing. I so appreciate being able to be a very small part of the huge work that God's doing in your life.

Guest (Male): If you'd like to share something with us, stop by our website, aboundinggraceradio.com, click on "Contact Us", and we'd like to connect with you before the day is done. Say hello. Tell us what God is up to in your life. When you visit aboundinggraceradio.com and then click on "Contact Us". Don't miss our next study in 1 Samuel with Pastor Ed next time on Abounding Grace. And may God richly bless you with His abounding grace.

Abounding Grace is brought to you by Calvary Church Colorado, here in Aurora.