Sound Doctrine

Guest (Male): God forgives sin, but in order to truly have our sins forgiven, there must be one essential ingredient: repentance.

Jeff Johnson: Lamenting to the Lord is not enough. There needs to be repentance. Just because you're sorry, it might be because you're sorry you got caught. And the tears that you're crying, tears don't always show repentance. It might be because you're sad because you got busted.

And now you got to go to jail, or this or whatever, next time, man, and we go through it. But see, tears without true turning means nothing. Godly sorrow leads one to true repentance, godly repentance.

Announcer (Male): Some people think they can sin and get away with it, and they forget that sinners reap what they sow. Others believe they can't turn to the Lord because of their sin. But where else can they go? Thanks for joining us for Sound Doctrine, and we'll join Pastor Jeff Johnson in a second.

Repentance is important when dealing with the sin in our lives. But on today's broadcast, we'll see God's people waiting 20 years before repentance. Now that's a long time. If we're wise, we won't wait and waste the years God has given us. From 1 Samuel chapter 7, here's Pastor Jeff.

Jeff Johnson: We're in 1 Samuel chapter 7 this morning, as we're going through the book of Samuel. We're going to be talking about the stone of help. The more I get into this book, the more excited I get as far as just seeing how God's word is so powerful and the Old Testament examples are so incredible as we watch God working in and through the Old Testament saints.

And it really helps us to understand his faithfulness. It helps us to understand his patience, his goodness, his longsuffering, so much. Now, we've been looking at the Ark, and it's been a hot potato. It went from Israel to their enemy, the Philistines, and then back to Israel again. And when it was amongst the Philistines, remember it was getting handed down from city to city.

And remember the Philistines had an idol that couldn't stand, and they couldn't sit because of the hemorrhoids that were brought forth on themselves. Gath was interesting when the Ark went to Gath. Gath is a city of giants in the Scriptures, so I guess they had giant hemorrhoids, but the Lord really got their attention.

But now the Ark is back with Israel, and yet still we see that they're not ready for the presence of God because remember what the disobedient priests did? They did a very stupid thing in actually looking into the Ark and because of that many were killed. So instead of repenting and getting it right with the Lord as what they had done, instead they seek to get rid of the presence of God. It's hard to believe. We don't want this presence of God with us anymore.

But it says in 1 Samuel chapter 6, verse 21, they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kirjath-jearim, saying, "The Philistines have brought again the Ark of the Lord; come ye down, and fetch it up to you." And so they are actually trying to get rid of the presence of God. You know that this nation, I was reminded this last week, that this nation in 1963 sought to get rid of the presence of God.

In 1963 and 64, we as a nation successfully removed prayer and Bible from our schools. Now that was a turning point for this nation. I don't know how many of you realize what happened there, but it made a statement. And that statement was: we do not want God, or his morals, or his Ten Commandments in our midst, which was of course a major mistake.

This was the beginning of the decline of our nation as never before. We have now become world leaders in teenage pregnancy, in abortion, in crime, and in illiteracy in our young. We're world leaders. We have a lot to be proud of. Without his presence, without his word, I'll tell you something, this nation is doomed without the presence of God, without the word of God, without the commandments of God.

But there is hope, and here is where you look at the big picture and you go, "Oh my gosh, we are such a backslidden nation." But there is hope, and it's right here in Samuel chapter 7. Because this records Israel's third major battle with their enemy, but this time they have victory because of their repentance as a nation and because of God's power moving upon them. They experience God's victory, and God gives them a stone of help, a reminder. Look at verse one of chapter 7.

And the men of Kirjath-jearim came and fetched up the Ark of the Lord and brought it into the house of Abinadab in the hill and sanctified Eleazar his son to keep the Ark of the Lord. So the Ark was to stay in Abinadab's house and Eleazar was separated and set aside just to watch over it while it was there. You might say that God and his presence was shelved for a time, sitting in this house.

Verse two: And it came to pass while the Ark abode in Kirjath-jearim, that the time was long, for it was 20 years, and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord. The time was long. 20 years had elapsed. 20 years without God. What is the results of 20 years without the presence of God? Well, we see Israel crying out to the Lord.

To lament is to mourn and to cry out. There is a good illustration of someone who is lamenting after the Lord, and that is in Matthew 15, where this woman began to go after the Lord and began to cry out to the Lord. And the disciples said, "Keep this woman away from the Lord. She's just bothering the Lord." And she kept it up, and it says that she not only cried out, she worshipped the Lord and said, "Lord, don't you care? And I have a daughter that's demon possessed, and I need your hand upon her life. I don't know what's going to happen."

And the Lord watched her and looked at her faith and said, "I've never seen such faith. Go your way, your daughter's made whole." But she lamented after the Lord. She went after him mournfully going after the Lord. Why were they lamenting? What was getting them down? Well, they were bogged down in sin. They were sin-snared.

They were captivated by sin, and they were in carnality all through the land. They were backslidden for 20 years, and this brought them to their knees because it's really no fun without God. It's no fun at all. It gets tough. The pressure is applied. What's it going to take for this nation to break? I don't know.

But I think the question is this morning: What's it going to take for you as an individual to get to that point where you cry out to the Lord, for you to come to your senses? Sin always brings sadness. Sin always brings sorrow, and so we see it here. But this morning, this lamentation, lamenting for the Lord, always is an encouragement because it is the first step to restoration.

At least you're crying out and you're saying, "It's bad, it's bad. We don't like it. We want it to get better." God is so longsuffering, he's so patient. He lets sin just have its way because he knows that sin brings sorrow and misery. And so if a people want sin, he says, "Then you have it. You want meat? I'll give you meat until it comes out of your nose."

You want sin? Then you have it. You live in it for a while and feel its effects. See what it does on your news. Knowing that sin will bring us to a point to cry out, he allows it to go on until we finally call upon his name, and then things start to turn around. Look at verse 3.

Samuel spoke unto all of the house of Israel, saying, "Listen, if you do return unto the Lord with all of your hearts, then put away the strange gods of Ashtaroth from among you and prepare your hearts unto the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines." Here we see the first fruits of Samuel's ministry.

During the 20 years he's been ministering. He's been trying his best to keep the schools of the prophets open and bringing young people in to give them the word of God. And they were going throughout the land, sharing the word of God. It wasn't having its effect, but now we see the first fruits of it: the beginning of his prophetic ministry to call Israel to return to the Lord.

He is bringing forth the word of the Lord to the people. This is what is needed. It's a sharp two-edged sword. God's word is always needed, especially in times when the people are crying out. It's the key to victory. And so a reformation is now going to take place. It's kind of like the prodigal son, remember when he found himself in the pig pen? He said, "What am I doing here? I'm getting ripped off. Oh, to go back home. Oh, to be like it was."

And finally, it says that he came to his senses and he was able to go back home. But see, lamenting to the Lord is not enough. There needs to be a reformation. There needs to be repentance. Just because you're sorry, it might be because you're sorry you got caught. And the tears that you're crying, tears don't always show repentance.

It might be because you're sad because you got busted. And now you got to go to jail, or this or whatever. Oh, next time, man. And we go through it. But see, tears without true turning means nothing. Godly sorrow leads one to true repentance, godly repentance. The scripture says godly sorrow leads to true repentance.

If you're really repentant towards God, then you're going to have a change of action. And there's four things that I see Samuel saying needs to happen. Number one is to turn with all of your heart to the Lord. See, God's word tests our sincerity towards the Lord. The word of the Lord came to them and he says, "Okay, if you really mean what you're saying, if you're really truly sorry, then turn all of your heart towards the Lord now."

Second thing: put away strange gods. Third thing: to prepare their hearts. Fourth thing: to serve him only. You see, God's word will instruct us in what we need to do in our duty towards the Lord. If you love me, obey my commandments. If you really love me, here's what you're going to do: you're going to turn away from the gods you've been serving, you're going to prepare your heart, and you're going to serve the Lord only.

Now, really, that's our part, isn't it? God says, "I want you to do this." But then comes his part. It's the best. And his part was, "Then I will deliver you from your enemies." That's his part. And so the word of the Lord comes to encourage us this morning. If you will do certain things, God says, "Then I will totally deliver you from your enemy, whatever that might be."

You draw near to me, what does the Lord say? "I'll draw near to you." For 20 years they were under the Philistine yoke. It was a long time. And God says, "I will deliver you." So now that you've tried it all your way, you've come to the end of yourself, Samuel says, "It's time to direct your energy now to God."

And faith comes by what? Hearing and that of the word of God. And so he was trying to give them God's word knowing that it would build up in them faith to do something about it. Now, there were two main gods in the land, the Philistines, and the two main gods were Baal and Ashtaroth. It was kind of a husband-wife team. Baal was the son of, remember, Dagon? We've already dealt with Dagon.

He's cut in half right now and his stump is sitting in their temple, right? Well, now we have Baal and Ashtaroth. Baal was the god of prosperity and materialism during that time. Ashtaroth, of course, was the goddess of pleasure, of sexual and lustful rituals that they would have in the temples. And the people of Israel, as I studied this, they were just like us today.

They were intellectuals of the time. They weren't stupid people. They didn't all of a sudden just bow down to these little wooden or stone idols because they were ignorant. No, they knew what they were doing. You say, "Well, how in the world did they get caught up in the worship of these gods instead of worshipping the one true living God?" Paul gives us a little hint, and I'll just read it to you: 1 Corinthians 10:20.

Where Paul says, "But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice to, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God. I would not that you should have fellowship with devils." In other words, it's not the statue that's dangerous. It's what's behind it. It's the satanic influence, the demonic power behind what people worship today.

Do you realize it captivates them? It deceives them. It brings them under its bondage and gets them deceived like it's the greatest thing for you, and they're blinded. And yet they're serving this god day in and day out. And so the children of Israel, like our nation today, man, I'll tell you, we worship the buck.

We worship materialism here in this nation. We are captivated and thinking that money is the answer of all your ills. If you have enough money, if you just go for it, get the American dream, that's where it's at. Well, I think that's slowly slipping away, right? Everybody's waking up to that as the Lord is bringing this nation down. But we are still lavishing ourselves in sexual sins, in the sexual pleasures of our society.

Prostitution is on the rise. Pornography is at an all-time high, as men continue to look and continue to go into those places, and it's thriving all over our land. The selling of sex is big bucks. So like Israel, our once-godly nation no longer focused on God, we have now gotten away.

And we are not separate as the Lord told Israel, "Come out from amongst them and be ye separate, says the Lord. Do not touch the unclean thing in the land. You keep separate." But we're no longer separate. We're indulging these gods all around us. It's no longer the wood and stone idols, but they're still gods of this world.

Even the blatant worship of Satan in the occult today is just incredible to me, as we have full-on churches of Satan now. And kids are coming out of the woodwork believing in death and serving it and going for it, getting caught up in actual sacrifices of animals and even children. The police are so concerned about what's going on in the occult and with our youth today, they have special seminars put on just to train the officers of what's coming up and what's happening in the occult.

So Israel, as ourselves, were being conformed into the pagan society around them. Idols were found in their homes. I was underneath the city of Jerusalem as they dug it up, they enshrined some of the houses that they dug up centuries ago. And you can see the little gods that they worshipped because they found them in the Israeli homes. And I thought to myself, "If we were to go and then people started digging up our homes, what would they find?"

What would they think we worshipped? Oh, I know there's not any little idols in your homes, but would they find things that they would be shocked about and say, "Look what they were into"? Whatever you live for is your god. Whatever is your master passion, whatever drives your life. To covet forbidden things is idolatry in the scriptures.

And worldliness enslaves a people. Pleasure chokes out the word of God from them. Jesus warned us of that. Israel has been deceived. They're bowing down now to these gods. Samuel says, "That's enough. It's time to get rid of them. Let the true and living God, Jehovah, be your God. Get rid of these gods and serve him only. And he then will deliver you from your enemies."

So after 20 years, Samuel encourages a spiritual revival, as today in our nation. God help us that we would also experience a spiritual revival. That as 2 Chronicles 7:14 says, "That if my people that are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven. Then I will heal their land."

But not until then. Judgment begins in the house of the Lord with the church in these last days. You see, the reason we're not seeing a giant revival is because God's people are being engulfed by the world. It's hard to tell the difference between a true Christian that's serving the Lord and someone that's not serving the Lord. And you're saying, "Well, which one?" I mean, we don't stick out real well.

So, Lord, light us up. Convict our very soul. Help us to truly repent and to pull away from these things and to truly come out from amongst them and be separate and be that light. You say, "But how could these people sacrifice babies?" Well, my question is, how can this nation allow the sacrifice of thousands and thousands of children every day? Little babies in the womb aborted over and over again.

To who? To the god of pleasure and lust. That's who our children are being sacrificed to. We're just as guilty. And we say, "Well, how could they do that?" Well, it's happening every day in our society. Decisions are being made. Lives are being taken. It's been about 30 years now since 1963, 64.

How long has it got to go? Is our nation getting tired? I think it is. In fact, they're reaching out. They're saying, "You guys, do you want to come into our school and put on a little seminar? Don't say anything about Jesus, but just tell our kids about abstinence. Don't say anything about the Ten Commandments, they're not ready for that yet, but they want morals." And they're reaching out for that which is true and righteous.

They don't know how to get it. And when it comes to us coming in, we say, "Well, hey, we've got to give them Jesus." "No!" And they're not quite ready, but they're getting softened, and we feel it and we're sensing it. They're starting to reach out as never before, the secular world. They've had it up to here because they've tried everything and nothing is working. It is all getting worse, I don't know if you've noticed.

They've tried it all. 30 years. It's time for this nation to repent, to repent and to get right. Verse 4: And the children of Israel did put away Baalim and Ashtaroth, and they served the Lord only. So all of a sudden they heard the word and they responded. They did put away their gods. They repented, and they started on the road to rightness.

Verse 5: And Samuel said, "Gather all Israel to Mizpah, and I will pray for you unto the Lord." Samuel took on that priestly role to begin to pray for them. They gathered together at Mizpah and they drew water and they poured it out before the Lord. And they fasted on that day and said, "We have sinned against the Lord." And Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpah.

So after the lamentation, lamenting before the Lord, after the reformation now comes humiliation, an outward sign of an inward attitude. They humble themselves before their God and they confess their sins. There's something about water baptism, where you come out to the beach or where you go out in front of all these people that are around the cliffs there at Corona del Mar and all the people out in the harbor stopping in their boats saying, "What are they doing? I think they're baptizing."

And it's a massive baptism out there, and people are just all shook up. And here you are, you're saying, "Yeah, I'm going to get baptized because God's done an inward work that I want to give an outward show." And I need to do this and I want to do this. Jesus is asking me to do this.

Announcer (Male): This is Sound Doctrine, and what you heard was part one of Pastor Jeff Johnson's study in 1 Samuel chapter 7. 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.

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We hope you'll join us for our next study in 1 Samuel; it's going to be a good one. That's right here on Sound Doctrine with Pastor Jeff, a presentation of Calvary Chapel Downey. Have a blessed day in the Lord.