Sound Doctrine

Guest (Male): Looking for victory today in your battle with sin and strife? Pastor Jeff reminds us today that all we have to do is ask.

Jeff Johnson: The lesson here is that if you will be true to the inward battle—I'm talking about those sins that so easily beset you as a Christian, those things that you're wrestling with this morning.

If you will fight the good fight of faith and lay hold on eternal life, if you will just cry out to the Lord and say, "Lord, give me victory in these areas," God will heal you, he will deliver you, and his power then will be able to go through you and we'll set the captives free in the name of the Lord. The captives will be set free. Victory first inside and then through us. That's what God wants to do.

Guest (Male): It's time for a great study in 1 Samuel here on Sound Doctrine. Pastor Jeff has framed a study around chapter 11. Let's say someone lashes out in anger against you and for no good reason. Or someone falsely accuses you of something at work, and you end up losing your job as a result.

When you're hurt like this, the world would say we have a good reason to exact a little revenge. But Pastor Jeff is going to suggest a much better approach. And that is to allow the Lord to fight your battles. Here's Pastor Jeff in 1 Samuel 11.

Jeff Johnson: I am sure that once Saul and Samuel heard what was going on, I'm sure there was that tinge of fear. "Oh my gosh, look what the enemy's doing." You know how sometimes the enemy comes in all of a sudden and you think, "Oh, I'm going to get wiped out. I don't have a chance." And there's that little bit of fear that you have and, "Oh, look what is going on here."

But Saul had righteous indignation. He got angry. He just got angry with the situation. And it was really a righteous indignation. It was a holy anger. He was angry because of what the enemy were doing to the children of God.

Now, remember when Jesus came into the temple and he looked around and he saw how they were wheeling and dealing? There were money changers. They were ripping the people off with crazy sacrifices, making them pay all kinds of money for sacrifices. And Jesus just said, "That's it! I've had it up to here!" And he made a whip.

And he went through the temple, lashing and knocking things over, and he drove them out. And everybody was just going, "Wow! Jesus meek and mild? Forget it!" as he came through the place and just drove everybody out. There were thousands of people there. Incredible.

Saul in his anger cuts up his oxen, sends it out, that graphic illustration. Everybody rallies together, and I believe this is exactly what God's call is to the church today. Do not fear what man can do to you because you will be threatened.

The church today is threatened. It will be more and more threatened as the government continues to take over and have more and more power. We are coming into times where this message that I'm sharing with you right now is going to be dangerous to share. And those sharing it will be dealt with.

But God wants us to rally together and not be afraid what man can do, but reverence God, obey and trust him above everything else and serve him alone and stand up because there's many that are bowing their knee to the Lord and many are going to be used of the Lord in these last and final days. Those that are a part of the army of God.

To rally together what? Against our enemy. Against the enemy of men's souls. To get the gospel of Jesus Christ out, no matter what. To go into the highways and byways, into the high schools, and as long as we can go, we're going to go. And we're going to tell those kids that you need to repent of your sins.

You need to receive Christ into your life, or you're going to hell. You're going to live a miserable life on this planet, let alone for the eternal life that you're going to have without God, without his presence in your life and his love. Man, you're missing so much. You need to give your life to the Lord.

Jesus loves you. He gave his life for you. That message needs to get out. But he had a holy anger that turned into an action that caused God to be glorified. It's kind of like the tough love type anger. You just hang tough and yet it's a holy anger that God gives to you. You hate the sin, but you love the sinner. You hate what is going on, but you seek to glorify God in and through it.

In Ephesians 4:26, it says, "Be ye angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." Do you know what the Bible tells us to do with anger? Deal with it. When you get angry about something, you've got to deal with it immediately. And if you don't deal with it immediately, bitterness is going to start to come up into your heart.

And it's going to devour you. In fact, over in Hebrews in chapter 12, I think it is, 12:15, it says, "Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up troubles you, and thereby many be defiled."

You see, if you don't deal with your anger, that anger is going to fester and it's going to bring forth bitterness in your life. And you're going to have a cloud over your head and you're going to have an attitude problem. And you know when you have that, it goes off on others and everybody sees it, and it hurts them too. They're hurt. You're not only hurt; they're hurt. So deal with the anger. No sloppy agape here at Calvary Downey.

You're angry at somebody? Clean up the mess. Take care of it. Handle it. Do it. Or bitterness will raise up inside of you. Speak it out. Go to that person. Don't go to bed with it. Deal with it. Let that anger be turned into an action.

Notice the people, they cried out, but they didn't help out. They shed tears, but they weren't willing to shed blood. They had all the emotions with no motion. There was no action. And you will know them by their love to one another. It's an action word, that we love one another. We take care of one another. We pray for one another.

Actually, I believe that Saul experienced true love here in that his anger was turned to God's glory. You'll see it in a moment. Remember with Jesus, there was a time where Jesus went into the temple area and they were watching Jesus because it was the Sabbath day. It's in Mark's gospel, chapter 3.

And as they were watching him, they wanted to see what he would do because there was a man with a withered hand in the corner. And they knew that Jesus' ways was always to heal people. And they thought, "Well, let's just watch and see if Jesus is going to go over to that man with the withered hand and see if he's going to heal him because this is the Sabbath day, and we're going to get him. We're going to really get him this time."

Jesus knowing what was going on in their hearts and as he watched them, he knew what they were thinking. This is what it says: Mark 3:5, "And when he had looked around about on them," it says, "with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man with the withered hand, 'Stretch forth your hand,' and he was healed."

Do you see what Jesus did with his anger? He was angry at these guys. "How dare you guys say you can't heal on the Sabbath day! The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Sabbath day is good. Sabbath day is a time of rest, of healing. I mean, if a man can't get healed on the Sabbath day, what are you doing?" He was angry and yet he turned the anger into healing.

And the man's hand was healed. You can turn your anger into something good to the glory of God, as Saul is doing here. He's having victory over an inward thing.

Now, listen, verse 8: "And when he numbered..." and then this is as everybody was coming together. Notice that one of the good things that took place to the glory of God is all the tribes now are unified. Everybody's got a common purpose. We're going to come against our enemy.

They rallied the troops together. We're talking about Baptists, Nazarenes. We're talking about God through Saul got all these people to come into one place. A miracle. That Baptists would worship with Pentecostals. Come on, let's get it together. We need each other. We need to pray for each other. We need to come together against our common enemy. We need to preach the gospel and not argue over doctrinal differences.

We need to love each other. Let the world know that we're true Christians, that Christ is in us. Don't argue with people. Bless them in the name of the Lord and just pray for them. And if they're argumentative and they want to get into it, just say, "Hey, I'm not in... I don't want to do this," and pull away and just love them.

But he got everybody together. And notice in verse 8, "And when he numbered them at Bezek, notice, the children of Israel were 300,000, and the men of Judah were 30,000," so 330,000 men. We got a pretty good army here.

"And they said unto the messengers that came, 'Listen, thus shall you say unto the men of Jabesh-Gilead: Tomorrow, by the time that the sun be hot, about noon time, you shall have help.'" The messengers came and showed it to the men of Jabesh, and guess what? They were glad. "Whew! We got help! They're rallying the forces. We got reinforcements coming in.

Oh, this is great news. We're not going to die. We don't have to pluck out our right eye, or they're going to pluck them out. We're going to be able to keep our eyes." And notice, verse 10, "Therefore the men of Jabesh said, 'Tomorrow we will come out unto you...'" to their enemy, "'...and you shall do with us what seems good to you.'"

They were kind of stalling for time. They knew help was coming. So they were saying, "Don't worry, tomorrow's coming, and we'll come out to you and we'll submit to you, whatever needs to be done."

Now, notice verse 11: "And so it was on the morrow that Saul put the people in three companies; and they came into the midst of the host of the morning watch..." The morning watch was about 3:00 in the morning to 6:00, so it was still dark. "...and they slew the Amorites until the heat of the day.

And it came to pass that they which remained were scattered, and there were not two of them that were together." I mean, they scattered them so far out. Because of Saul's inward victories that he was getting from the Lord, here is his outward triumph. They would have probably force-marched for approximately 20 hours to get this many troops to this spot during this time.

About 20 hours force-march in the early morning hours at dark. They snuck up on their enemy and they attacked in three waves. They just kept coming and coming. For five hours, they had this vicious battle.

And there was a great military victory. Notice, Saul is a man who is a farmer. He's out there just falling behind his ox. That's all he knows. He doesn't know anything but farming. And yet here is Saul—and here's the difference—anointed by the Spirit of God saying, gathering everybody together, "Okay, three companies.

Now, what we're going to do is we're going to go at night. And we're going to go early in the morning. We're going to force-march to the point. We're going to go early in the morning. We're going to surround. And then we're going to come in three waves." I mean, this guy's strategy is genius.

And it was an absolute victory. They came in to annihilate them, to wipe them out. And they did exactly that. They wiped them out. Where did he get this? Well, Zechariah 4 says it's not by your might, it's not by your power, or what you know. "Well, I was educated to be this." Big deal.

It's not by your power, your might; it's what? By the Spirit of the Lord. You will do things and God will call you to do things and enable you to do things you could never do in your own. That's the glory of it, the blessings of it.

That God wants to give us his anointing, his Spirit upon us to do things, to say things that we could never do or say, just as Saul did here. And so he had that victory, tremendous victory, because God's Spirit was upon him.

And the lesson here is that if you will be true to the inward battle—I'm talking about those sins that so easily beset you as a Christian, those things that you're wrestling with this morning.

If you will fight the good fight of faith and lay hold on eternal life, if you will just cry out to the Lord and say, "Lord, give me victory in these areas," that God will heal you, he will deliver you, and his power then will be able to go through you and we'll set the captives free in the name of the Lord. The captives will be set free. Victory first inside and then through us. That's what God wants to do.

And you get one, you got them both. So Lord, keep it coming. We need healing. Set the captives free. And sometimes we're the captives, aren't we? We're the ones shelved into a box. And we call ourselves Christians, but we're in a box and we're not even being used of God.

We're not even being fruitful for the Lord. We're sterilized. Why? Because we've let little nagging little inward things just defeat us. When God wants to set us free, he wants to fill us with his Spirit and totally deliver us.

And not that we would settle for, "Oh, I'm just living in this world as a Christian, just trying to make ends meet like everybody else. Economically just trying to get by." And we settle for junk when God wants to give us his Spirit and the anointing of his Spirit to minister to others, see them set free, and get into this spiritual warfare and rally together for God and things are going to start happening.

And let alone what God has done here throughout the years and is continuing to do. He is faithful to meet us right where we're at if we'll just listen, we'll be healed and delivered.

Verse 12: "And the people said unto Samuel, 'Who is he that said shall Saul reign over us? Bring the men that we may put them to death.'" I don't know if you see the transition here. Saul just got a great victory for Israel. He just did a great thing, right?

Everybody's watching him and going, "Wow! We just annihilated those guys!" That's right. "Well, we're not going to have our eyes plucked out!" That's right. "Well, we're free!" That's right. "Well, Saul, you're the greatest!"

Probably Saul at this time was going, "Well, that's right." Hopefully it wasn't going to his head. Hopefully it wasn't. But we know later on that one of the things that made Saul fall was pride. But anyhow, they're excited.

They're saying, "You're who we've been always waiting for. You're the man. We acknowledge you as our king. We submit our lives to you. And anyhow, who were those guys that were griping about you? We remember there was some guys with some accusations. What was their names? We want to write them down, bring them to us, we'll just chop their heads off." They're getting real radical here.

But I love this. Look at Saul's answer, verse 13: Saul said, "Listen, there shall not a man be put to death this day." Haven't we seen enough death already? "We're going to go out and you're going to kill your own? You're going to go ahead and start cannibalizing again our own tribes, I mean like we used to do with Benjamin?

Come on, what are we doing here? Nobody's going to die today." Notice what he says: "For today the Lord has wrought salvation in Israel." Listen, guys, God is good. He has been good. And here is Saul, cool under pressure, giving this awesome counsel.

And you know what? I see at first his reign, you're just going, "Yeah, this guy's going to be a good king." And it looks like it, doesn't it? Looks like, "Yeah, this guy, not only does he have that Spirit anointed wisdom to win battles, but he's really cool under fire.

And when it comes to division and schism in the body, he just says, 'No, we won't have division here. we won't start this. We won't have an inquisition. We won't pull these guys in and kill them because of their talking that way. We won't have it.'" And when you look at this, you just go, "Wow, this is wisdom."

And when you look at us today, who are we to be harsh and unforgiving to others after all that God has done for us? Hasn't God been good? And for us to turn around and be, "Just get them, man."

You know how sometimes it wells up inside of us and we go, "What did he say? Off with his head! That's it! He's restricted! He can't!" and we just go through and we just start waving our axe. When wait a minute, hasn't God been good to you? Then turn around and be good to others.

Let me read this scripture in Ephesians 4 again, verse 32. He says, "And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you." Think about how much God has forgiven you. Think about how many weird, terrible things you've done.

Who are we to jump on somebody else and chew them out? We should be just understanding and just love them. "You don't, wait a minute, Jeff. You don't know what he did to me." Well, wait a minute. What were you forgiven by God? "Oh, well, that's another story." No, it's not. Same story. As God has forgiven you, so what? Forgive others. Wow, there is a truth that will set you free inside. It's God's love.

It's awesome. No bitterness, man. Free of bitterness. Free of, "I'm going to get..." No, just, "Hey God, but for the grace of God, there go I. I mean, hey, God's been good to me. I can be good to them." Wise counsel.

Look at verse 14: "And then said Samuel to the people, 'Come...'" and Samuel's taking advantage of the situation. He sees what's going on. He says, "'Come, let's go to Gilgal and renew the kingdom there.'" Samuel knew that Gilgal was actually the very way that they came in.

The very first time the children of Israel crossed the Jordan was in the area of Gilgal. And they went into the Promised Land in that same area. It was a place to renew their commitment to the kingdom come, that they would have victory without, that they would go into the land of promise and drive the evil one out of the land to have victory over the enemies of God.

That God's kingdom would be established in this land. As we are praying today, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." And you know what? Our prayers are going to be answered. It's coming, man. And it's coming soon. So soon. We have little bit of time. Work while it is yet day because the night is coming, no man can work. We got the day now. We're on the time clock, guys, and it's winding down. We got to get busy. Time is of essence.

So victory without. But do you know what Gilgal speaks of also? Victory within. Gilgal speaks of the Jordan River, which always speaks and is a type of dying to the flesh. You die to your flesh and that means we can then put on the Spirit of God to go after the things of God.

How do you have victory inside? To die to yourself. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, not your own thing. To do your thing, do God's thing and all these things will be added unto you in your life. Seek first God and his kingdom, what he wants to do in and through your life.

You'll have victories inside and then he'll not only do a work in you, he'll do a work through you and you'll be able to touch so many for him. Where are those men and women of God that are ministering the gospel? Inviting people to come.

And then finally, verse 15: "And all the people went to Gilgal; and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal; and there they sacrificed sacrifices of peace offerings before the Lord; and there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly." And so this is Saul's re-confirmation, if you will. His affirmation. Saul's coronation. His ratification. Everybody was saying, "He is the king!" Why? Because this battle that he fought convinced them that he is the king.

Guest (Male): And speaking of battles, Pastor Jeff will be back in a few moments here on Sound Doctrine to remind us of a great battle that took place 2,000 years ago. And the stakes were as high as they could be. You've been listening to a study in the book of 1 Samuel here on Sound Doctrine with Pastor Jeff Johnson.

We pray you've been blessed by what you've heard today. 1 Samuel is filled with practical insights for Christian living. And if you'd like to hear this study again, go to sounddoctrineradio.org or listen through the Sound Doctrine podcast app.

You can also hear Sound Doctrine on oneplace.com and wherever you enjoy podcasts. That includes Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you'd like to get behind what we're doing and donate to this radio outreach, you can do so at sounddoctrineradio.org by clicking the give tab.

And thank you very much for your support. It's greatly appreciated and will be put to good use. Helping others build their lives on the sound doctrine found in God's word. Now with a reminder for us of the battle for our souls that took place 2,000 years ago, here is our teacher once again, Pastor Jeff.

Jeff Johnson: There was a battle that was fought 2,000 years ago for your soul. The King of Kings came down and became a man. Became a baby, grew up to be a man, and died on a cross for your sins.

What does God have to do? What kind of battle does he have to fight to have you convinced of this fact? That he loves you, that he came and died for you, that your sins were placed upon him on the cross, and that he paid for your sins there on that cross.

That if you would believe in him, you would not perish, but you'd have everlasting life. You'd live and live a life abundantly. He wants to be King of your heart. King of your soul. King of your life.

If you make him King of your life today, you'll go out of here rejoicing, believe me. There's nothing like just letting go and crawling into the back seat—you've heard me say it many times—letting God take the wheel. Nothing like it, man.

There is such a peace that comes upon your life. And continue to letting him. "Go ahead, Lord, it's yours. Wherever you want to go, whatever you want to do. Your will be done, not mine." It's great. You rejoice. He gives a joy that the world can't give and the world can't take it away.

But the joy comes when you make him Lord of your life, King of your soul, and invite him to take over. He's just waiting. He's waiting.

Guest (Male): We'll continue our series in 1 Samuel next week on Sound Doctrine with Pastor Jeff. A daily presentation of Calvary Chapel Downey. Have a great weekend.