In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: We get out of step with Him when we deliberately and willfully commit known sin. When God tells us to do something and we do something differently, what we are saying is, "I know better than God. I recognize that God is the sovereign ruler, but right now, I'm in charge."

When you and I choose to be disobedient to God, we choose to rule and reign in our own lives. And I'm telling you, dear friends, it bears terrible consequences.

Guest (Male): If we get out of step with God, we run the risk of being lured into complacency by pride and self-sufficiency. Today on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, you'll be reminded of the importance of always obeying God precisely.

Listen now to the tragic example of King Saul and learn how to avoid getting out of step with God. Let's listen in to Dr. Stanley's message.

Dr. Charles Stanley: It is a loving God who created you and provided a plan for your life. And not only that, He also provided an eternal plan for your life: eternal redemption, eternal salvation, eternal life. And yet some people are not very interested in that. They want to choose their own way in life. And what happens is they end up with emptiness and disappointment and all the things that come as a result of turning away from God.

And yet if you'll think about it, every single one of us is a unique person. There are no two people alike. God is not in the cloning business. He's made all of us absolutely unique. No one else like us. And He loves us every one. Have you thought about the fact that He has a plan for your life and He wants you to walk in a certain way? And if you walk in that way, then you're going to discover what life is like and what life can be at its very best.

If I walk in step with Him, I'm going to experience His best. If I get out of step, I'm on my own. I'm going to find out what I can do minus God. And I want to turn with you to 1 Samuel. And in 1 Samuel, here is a perfect example of a young man who had it all together. It couldn't have been better for him. He had everything going for him, and he chose to walk not in step with God's plan and purpose for his life, but out of step.

And what I want you to see is this: I want you to see how it began because it begins in all of our lives the same way. And I want you to see the steps and where it eventually took him. And sometimes people say, "Well, I like to hear real positive sermons about how good God is, how God loves us, and so forth." Well, all of that's true. But if you never confront the realities of life, if you never confront the truth of holy God and sinful man, if you never confront the truth of stepping out of God's will, you look around and you see what's happening to the people who do.

They live a life that's absolutely ungodly and wicked and vile, or maybe sophisticated but godless. You see what's happening, but have you ever thought how it got started and why it happens that way? So in 1 Samuel, I'm not going to read you a passage of scripture because I want to take you through these chapters and show you what happened in the life of Saul and apply it to your life and my life because it is so applicable. And it begins in this ninth chapter and the first verse when the Bible tells us about who he was.

There was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish, that's the son of Abiel, the scripture says, the son of Zeror, the son of Becorath, and the son of Aphiah, the son of a Benjamite, a mighty man of valor. None of those are very interesting to you, I'm sure. But listen to what happens. He had a son whose name was Saul. Listen to this description of him: a choice and handsome man, and there was not a more handsome person than he among the sons of Israel. From his shoulders and up, he was taller than all the people.

And the scripture says when Samuel saw Saul, the Lord said to him, "Behold the man of whom I spoke to you, this one shall rule over my people." That is up until this time, Israel didn't have a king. They had a theocracy. And so now they have the first king. And the tenth chapter in the first verse says, "Then Samuel took the flask of oil, poured it on the head, kissed him and said, 'Has not the Lord anointed you a ruler over His inheritance?'"

Now they had a big coronation in this tenth chapter and as a result of that, the scripture says in verse 24, "Samuel said to all the people, 'Do you see whom the Lord has chosen? Surely there's no one like him among all the people.' So all the people shouted and said, 'Long live the king.'" Now, so what I want you to see is this: he had everything going for him. He lived in a time when the Philistines were the enemies of the nation of Israel and all of his life he had to deal with the enemies.

And so he had to be strong and had to be courageous and had to be a charismatic leader. And from the description that God gives of him here, it appears that he certainly met all those qualifications. But what I want you to see is this: he made some mistakes. The same mistakes any one of us can make. Devastating mistakes, but not only that, one mistake leads to another. And I want to give you a little principle here that I pray to God you will not forget.

If you will listen carefully to this message, it will be a protective message to you. Is it all positive with lots of glitz and good and so forth? No, it's truth. It's reality. And sometimes we don't like to hear reality. If you don't face reality and face the truth, you get yourself in trouble. Here's a man who had it all together. And so the scripture says that his son Jonathan fought a battle of the garrison of the Philistines, and he won the battle.

But the scripture then says to us that it was Saul who blew the trumpet, and it was Saul the message went out that Saul had won the battle. Well, it wasn't Saul at all, it was his son. So you see in this first incident in his life, he's got a problem. And that problem is pride. He could not say, "My young son Jonathan went up and defeated the Philistines and won the battle." He's the one who sounded the trumpet, and he's the one who sent the message out.

And so what I want you to see is this: one of the traps of the devil, one of the most successful traps that so many people fall into—and I want to say this as strongly as I know how—that is the trap of pride. Cannot share whatever is happening. Must take credit no matter what. And so that leads us to another experience in his life. And the prophet Samuel had said to Saul, "Now here's what I want you to do. Before the battle—and here's what they would do. Before the battle, for example, they would offer sacrifices and cry out to God to give them victory."

And so here's what he said to him. He said, "Now look, I want you to wait till I get there. And I will tell you exactly what to do because it was the prophet who had the responsibility of governing how the sacrifices were made and who was to be involved." So the scripture says now Saul waited seven days according to the appointed time set by Samuel, but Samuel didn't come to Gilgal. He'd not come yet, and the people were scattering from him. So Saul said, "Bring to me the burnt offerings and the peace offerings," and he offered the burnt offerings.

Now, God had said to him through Samuel, "Wait till I get there." Well, it must have been pretty late in the day because listen to what it says. He was not late, for it says, "As soon as he finished offering the burnt offering, behold Samuel came and Saul went out to meet him and to greet him." Now watch this, because there's a habit here that you'll see over and over in his life. The same habit that people have in their lives today. So here's what he said.

He went out to meet him and to greet him. But Samuel said, "What have you done?" Saul said, "Well, because I saw that the people were scattering from me and that you didn't come within the appointed time, that the Philistines were assembling at Michmash, and therefore I said now the Philistines will come down against me here at Gilgal and I have not asked the favor of the Lord, so I forced myself and offered the burnt offerings." He forced himself.

Now, notice what he did. First of all, he's offering an excuse for what he did. And to prove that he felt guilty for what he did, he said, "I forced myself to do it." That I just made myself offer that offering, though he knew that it was forbidden. He said, "You have acted foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God which He commanded you, for now the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. It's not going to happen. The Lord has sought out for Himself a man after His own heart, a man who will be obedient to Him."

Now, here's what I want you to think about for a moment. God hates pride. If you'll turn to the 11th chapter of the Proverbs for a moment because it is such a trap and there's so many people who are defeated by it and they think they don't have it maybe. But listen to this verse in the 11th chapter of Proverbs and the second verse: "When pride comes, then comes dishonor." Dishonor. They lose their—in other words, pride will cause us to lose the favor of God in our life. It can happen to pastors, it can happen to plumbers. It can happen to every phase of life, mothers, no matter who you are.

Pride is the thing that God hates because it says, "I, I, I." Look in the 16th chapter for a moment and look in the 18th verse. The scripture says, "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling." And oftentimes we only read part of that verse, "Pride comes before destruction," but listen: "and a haughty spirit before stumbling." And that is when we elevate ourselves beyond what God intends for us to do and we take credit and we're looking for credit and it's "me, myself, and I." It is a terrible stumbling block.

And what I want you to see—listen, it leads to something else. There's no such thing as becoming prideful without involving other sins in a person's life because what they've done, they've taken their eyes off God. "I can handle it." And when somebody says, "Well, I can handle this and I can handle that, just trust me, you know I can do it, just trust the rock"—remember that's what Peter said? Peter said, "You can trust the rock." Next thing you know, what's he doing? He's denying that he even knows the Lord.

And is it not true that when you are around people who are very prideful and egotistical, what does it do to your spirit? It turns your spirit away from them. And the truth is when you're around someone who's prideful and arrogant, something in your spirit closes up to them. So the first thing I want you to notice is this: you can walk in step, but the moment you become prideful, you're out of step with Him. You are heading in the wrong direction.

The second thing I want you to notice is this: we get out of step with Him when we deliberately and willfully commit known sin. That is when a person who is a believer, for example, when we deliberately act disobediently to God, knowing that what obedience requires, and choose ourselves to do something that we know absolutely is not the will of God. We not only get out of step, but here's what happens.

When pride is there, when God tells us to do something and we do something differently, what we are saying is, "I know better than God. I recognize that God is the sovereign ruler, but right now, I'm in charge." When you and I choose to be disobedient to God, we choose to rule and reign in our own lives. And I'm telling you, dear friends, it bears terrible consequences because listen, you can't sin isolated. There's always relationships that go on here.

And so here's Saul. He made his first mistake by taking credit. Next thing you know, he's excusing himself for not waiting for the prophet, elevating himself—in other words, he put himself on the same level as the prophet of God, which was a violation that Samuel could not ignore. Now what you see, and I'm going to show you something here in a moment, here's what he does. He makes another terrible mistake because he's been given a command and as a result of listening to that command, he's responsible.

So let me tell you about who the Amalekites were. The Amalekites were a nomad tribe, and they lived off of other people robbing and killing them. And what happened, when the nation of Israel, the Hebrews came out of Egyptian bondage, what happened? The Amalekites attacked them. And here's what they would do. They would attack the last ones who were the lame people, maybe couldn't walk as fast, couldn't ride, maybe had lame animals or whatever it might be, and they killed them.

And so God said one of these days He was going to deal with that. So these are the Amalekites. And what God says to him, He says, "Now here's what I want you to do. I want you to go in and I want you to kill them. I want you to kill every single one of them. I don't want you to leave anything." And so somebody says, "Well, now wait a minute. Why would God, who is a compassionate loving God, tell him to take these people out?" Well, remember this: God is a compassionate loving God, and these people had been destroying and killing and robbing for years and years and years.

There was no evidence of any repentance whatsoever. They had their own gods, they were idolatrous serving other gods, and so God said, "I want you to take them out." And so what happens is they attack them, and they save Agag. And secondly, they go through all of their sheep and so forth and they take out the best and kill all the rest. And so they bring them back. Well, Samuel shows up and here's what happens.

Samuel rose up early in the morning to meet Saul, and it was told Samuel saying, "Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself." Well, what's he doing making a monument to himself? Because his pride is the problem. And so Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, "Blessed are you of the Lord. I've carried out the command of the Lord." Well, is that true or not? He did attack them. He did destroy their crops and a lot of their animals, but Samuel said then, "What is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?"

Saul said, "They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and oxen in order to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but the rest we've utterly destroyed." That's not what God said. Here's what happens. Listen. When a person is usually disobeying God, they usually have an excuse. And so what he did, he didn't obey God. Listen. Partial obedience is what? It's disobedience. Now here's a passage in the 15th chapter, I want you to look at it if you will, and the 22nd verse because it's just as applicable to us today as it was to Saul.

Samuel said, "Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices—that is in gifts—as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. Listen to this: For rebellion is as the sin of divination or witchcraft, and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has also rejected you from being king." Think about this. He says that disobedience and rebellion, it's as much sinful as witchcraft and as fortune-telling, divination.

And you see, sometimes we have the idea that we can sort of evaluate sin on, here's sin that's not so bad, and here's sin that's not quite, and on down we go, we want to rate it. Let me ask you, how do you rate sin? Who rates it? We rationalize it, but we can't rate it. He said, "You didn't do what I asked you to do." And he says, "What you've done is as sinful as divination, witchcraft." And listen, God hated it and He destroyed them when a witch was discovered or somebody was doing that kind of thing.

They destroyed, that was the law of God. Because He knew, here's what that is. It's idolatry. In other words, if you go to someone else to seek some divination of some sort and you're trying to find the will of God for your life, what you're doing is you are acknowledging that man can show you the will of God by some strange or by some personal ability or talent or skill or they have some insight into your life. That's why the whole New Age movement that substitutes other things for God is destined for utter destruction.

It is not of God. You say, "Well, I know some fine people." And then they're misled. The only person that you and I have the right to seek the mind of God about is our heavenly Father, or someone who is committed to the heavenly Father, who is a spirit-filled believer, who has your best interest at heart and who knows the word of God and who can lead you according to the scripture. They didn't have the scripture in those days. And so what happened?

Here's what he said. God hates it. He says, "Rebellion is as the sin of divination, and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry." And let me say this to you and be careful how you listen. If you have never trusted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, you're not a Christian. Do you realize that you're guilty of idolatry? You say, "I'm not guilty of idolatry." Well, let me ask you this: if God the Father through His son Jesus Christ is not God in your life, you have decided to be God in your life.

"I will decide what I'll do. I will decide who I am. I will decide where I'll go. I'll decide how I'm going to spend my money. I'll decide who I like. I'll decide who I relate to." It is idolatry. If you want life at its best, you acknowledge the living God through His son Jesus Christ. You say, "Well, I believe in God but not Jesus." Think about this. The resurrection of His son was God's shout to the world: He's told you the truth, He is the way, now follow Him.

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. It's easy for us to rationalize our obedience, obeying only to the degree that we want. But when believers follow God's plan thoroughly, He is honored and we are fulfilled. If you want to go back over this message, head to our website intouch.org and look for the link to "Today on Radio" and order a copy of Dr. Stanley's message, "Getting Out of Step."

Visit our online bookstore. It's also part of the complete teaching set entitled "In Step with God." Again, log on to intouch.org or call or text us. The number is simply 1-800-INTOUCH. To write to us, address your letter to: In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 30357. And again, our phone number: 1-800-INTOUCH.

The Apostle Paul had a friend who was a servant of the gospel named Tychicus. Discover what we can learn from him and people like him coming up in today's moment with Charles Stanley.

In Touch Plus is streaming on Local Now, featuring all the best of Dr. Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: We're to have strong convictions based on the Word of God. He's working out things that you and I would never know about in our future.

Guest (Male): In Touch Plus, your streaming network for quality Christian programming 24/7. Now watch this. In Touch Plus, streaming free on Local Now.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Let your time and your schedule and everything about you revolve around this: that you and I are to develop and continue to develop this ongoing, intimate, wonderful, exciting, satisfying, indescribable, wonderful, incomparable relationship with a personal God. Dr. Stanley devoted his entire life to helping us get closer to Jesus, as we all want to do. You can learn how at charlesstanleyinstitute.org.

Guest (Male): You're listening to In Touch. Everything a believer does to honor Christ is significant to God, even if other people never know about it. Here's a moment with Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: When I think about the Apostle Paul, we think about all that he achieved, the churches he established, the sermons he preached, all the places he traveled—just this absolutely awesome ministry he had. But one thing we forget, and Paul did not forget, and that is those who helped him, those who were in the background but who were very important. Listen, for example, in this fourth chapter of Colossians, he names nine of his coworkers, nine of his friends who were helping him.

For example, he talks about Tychicus, and then Onesimus and Aristarchus and Barnabas and Mark and Justus and Epaphras and Luke, Demas, and Archippus. All of these were part of his ministry. And you see, if you should ask any one of them, "Well, what kind of ministry do you have?" they would probably say what some of you would say, "Well, I just do so-and-so." In the kingdom of God, there's no "just I do anything."

Listen to how he describes Tychicus. He said, "As to all my affairs, Tychicus, a beloved brother, faithful servant, and fellow bond-servant." And what did he do? Here's what Tychicus did. He took Paul's letters that he was writing from a Roman prison, by the way, and he carried them to the churches. And you see, oftentimes those who are serving in places that may be less prominent feel like that what they're doing is less important.

It is not less important. I don't know where you serve the Lord in your church or maybe in some ministry. What you do is very important in the eyes of God. There's no such thing as "less than." No such thing as being unimportant. We're all important. We have different roles. Every single role is important in the eyes of God. You are very important to God. And if you're a follower of Christ, what you do is very important to Him as well.

Guest (Male): Learn more when you visit us online at intouch.org. And if today's program has motivated you to obey God in a new way, we'd love to hear from you. On the next edition of In Touch, we'll continue looking at the life of King Saul and learn how to avoid his mistakes as the series moves forward on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley.

This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts. And again, our phone number: 1-800-INTOUCH.