Let's be turning to 1 Samuel
chapter 13. 1 Samuel 13. Let's begin in verse 1. Saul reigned
one year, and when he had reigned two years over Israel, Now let
me just pause that thought there. This is generally understood
to mean that in Saul's first year, it was pretty quiet. Nothing eventful happened in
that first year. But here we come to the second
year. And in this second year, Saul
begins to do things that a king might do. It says there in verse
2, Saul chose him three thousand men of Israel, whereof two thousand
were with Saul in Michmash and in Mount Bethel, and a thousand
were with Jonathan in Gibeah of Benjamin, and the rest of
the people he sent every man to his tent. So he was making
use of a small army. And the next chapter says that
as Saul identified somebody of interest, somebody that looked
like he could be useful or profitable in his army, he would recruit
them to be with him. Verse 3 and 4, and Jonathan smote
the garrison of the Philistines that was in Geba, or the hill. This is in the hometown of Saul. where Jonathan was stationed
here. And the Philistines heard of it, and Saul blew the trumpet
throughout all the land, saying, Let the Hebrews hear. And all
Israel heard say that Saul had smitten a garrison of the Philistines,
and that Israel also was had in abomination with the Philistines. And the people were called together
after Saul to Gilgal. And so Saul, as the king there
of the land of Israel, he decided that it was time to send a message
to the Philistines. And so he decided to take action
against them. And this was probably a relatively
small outpost of the Philistines there, because they had the rule
over Israel. This is probably sometime after
Samson, in that 40 years when they had the rule over Israel.
Verse five, and the Philistines gathered themselves together
to fight with Israel, 30,000 chariots. And that means some
of them were probably used to carry their equipment and things
like that into the field. And 6,000 horsemen and people
as the sand, which is on the seashore in multitude. And they
came up and pitched a mickmash eastward from Beth Abaam. So
as soon as Saul departed from Michmash himself with his army
to go to Gilgal and wait for Samuel to come to him, because
this is what Samuel said when he anointed him, right? He said,
go to Gilgal and in seven days I'll come to you. Meaning, if
something should happen, you go to Gilgal and within seven
days time I'll have heard of it and I'll come out and tell
you what you should do. And so he does that, and the
Philistines come and fill in the void left behind in Mikmash. It was a strategic place. What's going on here? Well, you
remember that Israel wanted a king. They wanted a king just like
all the other nations. And in doing that, the Lord tells
them through Samuel, they've rejected me as their king. That's what's going on here,
Samuel. They've chosen a king according to the flesh. And they've
rejected me in wanting this king. So give them a king. And now
they're beginning to reap the rotten fruit of turning to the
flesh. Now this is beginning to bring
forth that fruit which comes from turning to the flesh. Now let's read the next three
verses. And when we do that, notice the fruit. It describes
the fruit that was born or wrought in the people here. And it says
there, verse 6, when the men of Israel saw that they were
in a strait, or they were in a difficult spot, they were between
a rock and a hard place here, for the people were distressed. Then the people did hide themselves
in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places,
and in pits. And some of the Hebrews went
over Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. As for Saul, he was
yet in Gilgal, and all the people followed him, trembling. And
he tarried seven days according to the set time that Samuel had
appointed. But Samuel came not to Gilgal,
and the people were scattered from him. And so because of the
fleshly actions of their king, doing things that kings do, the
people were distressed. They were beginning to bear fruit
of the flesh. Fruits of the flesh, works of
the flesh. They were distressed. They were going to and fro and
looking for a hiding place. were looking to hide themselves.
They fled from the land. They went over the River Jordan
to the furthest away tribes to get as far away from what was
about to happen as possible. They were trembling, and they
were scattered. And so this is the fruit of the
flesh. This is what the flesh bears.
Now Saul had had a quiet first year. But he felt the need to
do something as king. He felt the need, while I'm a
king, got an army, I'm going to put them to use. I'm going
to put this thing to use. I got to do something here. And
so he turned to his flesh. He just decided to go and pick
a fight to turn against the Philistines and to take some action against
the Philistines, to do something. Verse 9, and Saul said, bring
hither. He sees the people leaving him.
They're fleeing. They're starting to scatter.
And it's been seven days. It's the seventh day. And Samuel
hasn't showed up yet. And he says, bring hither a burnt
offering to me and peace offerings. And he offered the burnt offering. Now, are you beginning to notice
a pattern here? There's a pattern here with Saul.
Saul has troubled himself and he's troubled his people because
he felt he needed to do something. And now, because Samuel hasn't
showed up, he's thinking, I got to do something. I got to do
something here. There's something that I have
to do. And he felt that need, and so he started to do something.
He started to offer the burnt offerings. So one thing that
we see here in this is that when you're in trouble, even if you've
brought that trouble, you think you've brought that trouble upon
yourself. When you are in trouble and you don't know what to do,
it doesn't mean that you just do anything to do something. You don't just turn to the flesh
and just start doing things and start taking pot shots at things
and trying to quiet the trouble that's now come upon you. We don't have to do something.
A lot of times we put that pressure on ourselves, and we think I've
got to do something. And our mind starts racing and
running, and then we just forget, I'm just going to do it. And
you do something, and it doesn't help. It's not the right thing
to do. And we've only done it because
we feel like we needed to do something. Right? Time's going,
I gotta do something here. And there are times where you
have to make a decision about something, but not always. Not
always. And a lot of times we just do
it to do something and to make a change. But when you don't
know what to do about a situation, you just don't know what to do,
don't just start doing stuff in the flesh. Pray. Cry out to
the Lord. And wait upon Him. And seek His
face. If you don't have to do anything,
don't do anything if you don't know what to do. And wait upon
Him. Trust Him to make your way known. And then the other thing is,
we see Saul being turned. He's doing something, and he's
turning to religious things. Bring me the burnt offering.
I'm going to make sure that gets done. Let's just start doing
these things here. And in these religious works,
Saul's actually turning to the flesh. It wasn't a good thing.
He wasn't believing the Lord. He wasn't waiting on the Lord.
Even though he was doing religious things, what he was supposed
to be doing. It wasn't according to the commandment
of God to him. It was actually works done in
the flesh and not by the spirit. And we're all capable of doing
that. We all stumble in that. And by the grace of God, he makes
that known to us when we've been foolish. and when we've done
things that weren't necessary. And he shows us how that we make
messes of things when we're not leaning on the Lord and trusting
the Lord and waiting on the Lord to teach us and to guide us and
to lead us. And so Saul was turning to the
flesh, verse 12, Well, this is after Samuel came
there, because right after, the day had not ended, the seventh
day had not ended, Samuel comes. Saul didn't even send out anybody
to look for him, and he starts the burnt offering process there,
and Samuel shows up and says, what have you done? What have
you done here? And then Saul gives his excuses. He says, verse 12, therefore
said I, the Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal. And I have not made supplication
unto the Lord. I forced myself, therefore, and
offered a burnt offering." And this is a picture of what many
do in religion today. They think that they're in trouble
because they've been insincere, they haven't labored hard enough,
they haven't made a significant enough sacrifice, and they start
trying to to really dig in, and be more faithful, and be more
committed, and sacrifice more for the Lord, and get more strict,
and more disciplined, and do something to try and please the
Lord. And that's really the cause of all their trouble to begin
with, is looking to the flesh, and trusting in the flesh. And
so, like Saul here, we are tempted to turn to the motions of what
really is nothing more than dead letter religion. Just going through
the motion and going through that work to try and gain some
relief from God and try and gain God's favor and get Him to bless
us and to do something for us because of this trouble that
we're feeling here. But the one thing that the Lord
does for His people in the gospel through the Lord Jesus Christ
is to show us that we cannot please God by our works. He's actually showing us that
you cannot save yourselves and you're not going to get yourselves
out of these things. The Lord is the one who's going
to save you. And that's when it's the greatest
blessing to us is when we are brought to the end of ourselves,
when we are out of ideas, when we are fearful because of the
trouble we've brought upon ourselves. And we see the hand of the Lord
come in. He makes us to cry out to him, to confess our sin to
him, to cry out to him. And his hand delivers us from
the trouble that we're in. And that's the greatest joy for
the child of God, to see my God has done this for me. And he
did it for me graciously, because I can't even look to anything
that I did. I was making a mess of everything. And the Lord came
in, He broke me, humbled me, showed me my sin, and He came
in and delivered me. He caused me to cry to Him and
to beg Him for mercy, and then He delivered me. And He brought
it all to pass. He did it all for my good. He
suffered that to happen in order to bring me to a knowledge and
understanding that my God is God. And He's the God who hears
prayer. And He's the God who gives the
prayer to His people. He's the God who teaches His
people faithfully through the gospel to see that Christ is
all. And so the Lord brings us to
see that we cannot please Him. Isn't that what Paul says in
Romans 8.8? So then they that are in the
flesh cannot please God. And we're seeing here, Saul is
doing fleshly things. He's a king who pictures that
usurpation of taking the kingship from the Lord, right, turning
from the Lord and turning to the flesh. He's a picture of
that in the scriptures. And then we see him doing things
that the fleshly king does, trying to go after the Philistines.
And the Philistines are what? They're often a picture of sin
in our own flesh. And people turn to fleshly things,
religious things, but they turn to fleshly things to try to subdue
and quiet and kick out and get rid of the Philistines that we
see in our flesh. And he's turning to his own works.
under the law, our best efforts. And when we do that, we're laying
a heavier burden on ourselves. It's not the burden of Christ,
it's a burden that we had to ourselves. And I'm mindful of
what Peter said, who said, the Lord raised me up and sent me
to the Gentiles, and now you guys are coming in with another
gospel to put a yoke upon the neck of the Gentiles, of the
disciples, that neither we nor our fathers were able to bear.
And we're just heaping it on. And we do that even in religion.
We think we've got to do something for the Lord instead of turning
to the Lord and crying out to Him and begging Him for mercy
and grace and help in time of need. because he'll bring you
into need for your good, to bless you, to break you of the strength
of your flesh, to whittle you down, to show you your need of
Christ. He does that, and when he does
it, and when he shows us Christ, it's joyful, it's wonderful,
because then you see God is my Savior. Christ is my Savior. He saved me. He brought me into
this. He suffered this in me to deliver
me by His own right hand to do for me what I needed. Turn over
to Romans 7. Romans 7, and this is Paul here,
he's learned this. The Spirit of God has revealed
this to him about the law. I think this probably was taught
to him at some point after he was converted, and he was in
the wilderness all that time. The Lord taught him the gospel. And he sees here what the Lord
is teaching us through the law, how the Lord used the law to
teach us our need of Christ. What say we then, verse, Romans
7, 7? What say we then? Is the law
sin? God forbid, or absolutely not. Nay, I had not known sin, but
by the law. For I had not known lust, except
the law had said, thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion
by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence,
all manner of sensual, lustful desires, covetous desires. Because
the law said, don't touch that. Don't take that. That's not yours.
Don't even desire it. And then what happened? The sin,
the Philistines of this flesh, the sin of this flesh was provoked.
Now you just stirred it up. Now you just brought some issue
there and it's fighting back. For I was alive. Yeah, for without
the law, sin was dead. For I was alive without the law
once. But when the commandment came,
sin revived, and I died. And the commandment which was
ordained to life I found to be unto death. For sin taking occasion
by the commandment deceived me, and by it slew me. This is what
the Spirit had taught Paul. For a time there, he thought
he was keeping the law, and that this was his righteousness and
salvation. But when the Lord, by power and
grace, showed him his sin, then he was condemned, and he was
slain. And he saw that he could not keep the law. righteousness
in his flesh. Wherefore, he says, the law is
holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. The problem
is not with the law. The problem is with me. I'm the
sinner, that's what he's saying, and that's what the Lord shows
us. Was then that which is good made death unto me? No, God forbid. But sin, that it might appear
sin, working death in me by that which is good, that sin by the
commandment might become exceeding sinful. And so Paul, just as
all children of God, come to know that the purpose of the
law, by the grace of God, when the Lord makes us to hear what
the law is saying, is for us to see what vile, depraved, wretched
sinners we are by nature, and that we cannot save ourselves,
and that our choice, our will, in bondage is to turn to the
flesh in more bondage. That's what we do. The Lord graciously
turns us from those false ways that cannot save. He turns the
heart to Christ. So when a man attempts righteousness
by the law, that law comes in and it stirs up, it provokes,
just like Saul going after the Philistines. I gotta get rid
of these Philistines. I gotta knock them out of the
land. Let me do something to get rid of the Philistines. And
you stir up that hornet's nest, and now there's all kinds of
problems, and you've got trouble. And you're trying to come at
it with religious things, Because you think you should or whatever
it is and the Lord shows us he humbles us. No You can't save
yourself. You're gonna need the Lord to
do this for you. And so God didn't give the law
because man can make himself holy by the law. You may have
heard that at some point in your life. If you couldn't keep the
law, God wouldn't have given it. That's not what the scriptures
teach. The scriptures teach you can't
keep it, and God gave it to show us the sinfulness of sin, to
show us the exceeding sinfulness of sin and the horrific condition
that we're in that we cannot give ourselves life. And so this
is what the Lord teaches us. He makes us new creatures to
know this. And look up there in Romans 7,
verse 4. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also
are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should
be married to another. And just remember that. When
you see that body of Christ, it is a blessing because in Romans
6, it talks about the body of sin that we were in by nature
in Adam. And we've been delivered out
of that body. and are in the body of Christ. We are in the
fellowship and the family of God for Christ's sake, because
of Christ. We are delivered from all that
pollution and the condemnation and the condemning Word of the
Law coming down upon them. We've been delivered from that
and are in the body of Christ. That ye should be married to
another. Not to Moses in the Law. We're not married to the
Law anymore. He's not our husband. Christ
is our husband. We hear Him. And he's not harsh
and demanding like Moses in the law. No, he's gentle and he's
kind and he gives us that power and his grace and he draws us
to himself sweetly by his grace and by his spirit. So we are
married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead,
that we should bring forth fruit unto God. For when we were in
the flesh, the motions of sins which were by the law did work
in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we
are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held,
that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness
of the letter. To go back to Moses is to be
an adulterer, because he's not our husband. Christ is our husband.
And we're going to bear fruit by Christ, by His Spirit. He's
our husband. And so that's where we're going
to bear fruit. And so we lived under that, but now we're delivered.
And we've been given the Spirit of God, made new creatures in
Christ, and are raised again, raised anew by the Spirit of
God, by the regenerating work and power of Christ. And this
new life, it is a resurrection from spiritual death. We were dead in Adam, spiritually
dead. Could not know God, didn't know
how to worship God, didn't know how to please God. That's why
we turned to foolish things in the flesh, thinking that that's
what we needed to do. But we're raised from the dead. Paul said it this way to the
Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 1, 17 and 18. He said, for Christ
sent me not to baptize, right? We should, we baptize believers.
You do baptize believers. But he said, my primary purpose
of coming to you Gentiles is to preach the gospel, not with
wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none
effect. It is to demonstrate the power
of God. For the preaching of the cross
is to them that perish foolishness. But to us which are saved, to
us which are being saved, are saved, it is the power of God. And that word power there is
the word dunamis, where we get our word dynamite from. Because
that's its power. It's the power of God that explodes,
blows open the grave, that takes that stone over the grave and
blows it out of the way and releases us from our bondage and brings
us into the light, which is Christ. and makes us alive in Christ,
our Savior, our husband, our friend. And so he gives his spirit
and the spirit takes the gospel word and makes it effectual to
our hearts so that we hear it. with the ear of faith and in
a new heart and in the spirit and grace of God. We hear it
in the new man and believe him. Christ said it this way in John
5. This is relevant to that resurrection. He said in John 5 verse 24 and
25, Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word
What do you mean, hear your word? Just hear you speaking, Lord? No, he that heareth my word with
the ear of faith, by that hears what the Spirit says, and believeth
on him that sent me, hath everlasting life. You have it. You're not
still striving, laboring for it, and spending, and sacrificing
for it. You have it. You have it. And shall not come
into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. Verily,
verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is when the
dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that
hear shall live. He's talking about the first
resurrection, that resurrection from spiritual death when we
are made alive in the Lord Jesus Christ. So that you that have
been born again raised from the dead and partakers of that first
resurrection by the grace of God, he says that second death
hath no more power over you. You have nothing to fear of that
second death, which I take to mean when we die in this flesh.
We are already dead in Adam, and then we're going to die in
this flesh and go to the judgment. And He says that, you don't have
anything to fear. You don't have anything to fear
in Christ. You that believe Christ and trust Him, you've been delivered
from that body of sin, which is going to be cast into hellfire. You don't have any part in that.
That's not your inheritance. Your inheritance is Christ. It's
Christ. And so, He saves us. Oh, and then just so you know,
he's not talking about the resurrection of the dead from the grave. He
says in verse 28, don't marvel at this. He says the hour is
coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear
my voice or hear his voice and you'll be raised from the dead.
And so he's saying, you think that being raised from from the
grave is something I tell you, you're going to be raised spiritually.
My people will be raised from spiritual death. And so by his
voice, his power. So the wicked thinks trusting
God's word revealed in the gospel that that's foolishness. Wait,
you're trusting God? You're waiting on him? You're
believing the Lord to save you? But the Spirit teaches us that
wait, no, when you turn to the flesh and you turn to the law,
and you turn to dead works and religion to save you because
you think you've got to do something, that's foolishness. And that's
what Samuel said to Saul in verse 13, back in 1 Samuel 13, verse
13. And Samuel said to Saul, thou
hast done foolishly. Thou hast not kept the commandment
of the Lord thy God, which he commanded thee. What do you mean?
He was doing religious things. Isn't that doing the commandment
of God? Shouldn't he have been doing the law? No, because that's
not what he's talking about. The Lord isn't turning you to
the law for righteousness. And so Saul, or Samuel, well,
what Samuel's saying and what Paul was saying in Romans 7 is
God's commandment to us is not to turn to the flesh. What is
God's commandment to his people? Believe on the one whom I have
sent. Trust my son. Hear him. Follow him. Believe him because
he is salvation. If you try to come to me in any
other way, you will meet an angry God. A God who will, because
you're condemned already. You will be judged. and according
to your sins because you come in your own righteousness. And
so the commandment of God is to believe the Lord Jesus Christ. God said of his son, this time
we saw it in his baptism, this time in his mount of transfiguration,
he said, the Lord said, this is my beloved son in whom I am
well pleased, hear him. You hear him because he is salvation. He's the one I've sent to save
my people from their sins. And our Lord tells us in John
3, 18 and 19, he that believeth on him is not condemned, but
he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not
believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this
is the condemnation that light is coming to the world and men
loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. And that includes the scribes
and the Pharisees who were keeping the law. He's saying that their
deeds are evil. their deeds, just like the drunkard
and the one living in sin. Well, so the same thing with
the religious one who's trusting their works of religion to save
them and to provide for them in the same way that Saul was
going after the Philistines to thrust them out. It's just a
picture of turning to the law, turning to religion, turning
to the flesh to get rid of sin and to cast sin from you. Doesn't
work. Doesn't work. Only the Lord saves
his people. And Paul even teaches us. He shows us that it isn't just
the Pharisees who rejected Christ, but even the Pharisees and the
concision, as we read earlier in Philippians 3, even those
who said, yes, yes, yes, it's good to believe in Jesus. You
need Jesus. However, you must be circumcised.
And except you be circumcised after the manner of Moses, he
cannot be saved. That's what they said in Acts
15, 1. And it's just a picture of that cutting out in the flesh,
the concision, Paul called them, who just cut, cut, cut, and touch
not, taste not, handle not, and don't do this, and don't do that.
And they think that's their salvation. That's their righteousness. That's
their keeping themselves holy and spotless from the world.
But beware, because The heart of man loves dead letter religion. This flesh loves dead letter
religion and is drawn to those lies. We need Christ. We need
Christ. And that's why he gives us the
gospel to keep turning our eyes back from the world, whatever
it is, just drinking in the world or drinking in dead letter religion
and puts our eyes back on Christ because he's our salvation. He's
our salvation. And God does it because he's
very gracious to his people. We were put under a commandment
in Adam. Adam had one commandment, and
that was to eat not of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. And Adam, in that perfect environment, as
an upright man, couldn't even keep that one commandment. And
when he died, we all died. We all failed to keep the commandment
of God. But the Lord sent the last Adam,
Jesus Christ, the perfect Savior, the perfect man, that the God-man
mediator come to save His people from their sins and He made Him
the captain of our salvation. So that He's going to lead you.
He's not going to leave you to fall away. He's going to save
you and deliver you from the fires of hell and keep you and
bless you. And we see that in the next verse
14. Samuel said to Saul, but now
thy kingdom, he's speaking to a man of flesh there, and he
says, but now thy kingdom shall not continue. The Lord hath sought
him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him
to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that
which the Lord commanded thee. Now, historically there, yes,
he's speaking of David. who would be a king after that
God selected for his people to give them, but he's a type of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is called the captain
of our salvation in Hebrews, Hebrews 2.10. He's called the
captain of our salvation. He's the man after God's own
heart, the one whom he sent. And so he's our captain, he's
our savior. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and you shall be saved. Trust Him. He is the Savior.
He is salvation. He is the very salvation of God's
people. He's not telling you how to get
yourself saved. We come to Him because He is
salvation. He is the Savior. And so religious
idolatry, it insists, wait, we should be able to save ourselves
from sin. We should be able to deliver
ourselves from sin. But the scriptures teach us Christ. point us to Christ, to look to
Him by faith, to learn of Him by His grace and mercy through
the preaching of His gospel, to seek Him and trust Him and
lean upon Him and cry to Him and beg Him for mercy, because
He's the Savior. Romans 8, 23 through 25 says,
and not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits
of the Spirit. This is speaking to us too. The
firstfruits of the Spirit is you that believe have been raised
from the dead by the Spirit of God, and that's your down payment.
That is a down payment from God saying to you, you're my child,
so that you hear these words and believe Christ and know him.
So we have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves,
grown within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the
redemption of our body. Right? Because the body is sinful. We still see the weakness of
this flesh and the corruption of this flesh. Four, we are saved
by hope, but hope that is not seen is not hope. For what a
man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? If I order something online,
and I'm waiting for it to come in the mail, and it's important
to me, and I need it, I hope it's going to be here when it
says it's going to be here. I'm hoping for it. But the moment
it arrives, I stop hoping it's going to arrive on time, because
I have it. I'm in possession of it. So the hoping ceases then
once we have it. But if we hope, for that we see
not. And I don't see what I, I don't
think I'm the man that I should be. I know Christ, I know what
I ought to be, what I want to be, but I don't see it yet in
my flesh as I think I ought to see it. but we'll see it when
Christ comes. For then we shall be changed,
our bodies will be redeemed, and we shall be like him, for
we shall see him as he is. And he will transform this body,
this sinful, weak, corrupt body, into that perfect, heavenly body,
fit to stand in the presence of our God. And so we hope, for
that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it, by faith. wait upon the Lord by faith rather
than just doing stuff or waiting upon him by faith to lead us
and guide us and teach us. And once more in Galatians 5,
5 and 6, for we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness
by faith. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision
availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love. And so that's what Saul wasn't
doing. He wasn't waiting. He was working.
He was working. And so the way we're gonna be
led of Christ is by his spirit, and the Lord's gonna preach the
gospel to you, because that's where he feeds you. That's how
he feeds you, whereby the new man of grace is nourished and
fed. Now, I have just one more point,
but it's relevant, and it's very brief. Very brief. Go back to
1 Samuel 13, because it edifies what I just said. The Lord's
gonna preach to you the gospel. and give you the gospel. So verse
17 and 18, and the spoilers came out of the camp of the Philistines
in three companies. One company turned unto the way
that leadeth to Ophrah unto the land of Shul, and another company
turned the way to Beth Horon, and another company turned to
the way of the border that looketh to the valley of Ziboam toward
the wilderness. And so I said the Philistines
are a picture of sin in our flesh, and they go out to spoil, to
spoil our joy, our peace, our comfort, our rest in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And there's a picture there,
if I remember correctly, the ophra means fawn, and shul means
jackal. Some say it was fox. Sometimes
it's translated fox in your Bibles, but it means jackal. And what
did jackals do? They ripped fawns apart. They'll
eat fawns and they'll destroy those things. And another company
went to Beth Horan, which means the house of hollowness. It's
just emptiness. And they go there. And another
company turned to the way of the border that looketh to the
valley of Ziboam, which means hyenas, toward the wilderness,
toward that pasture land where sheep would feed. And they just
went out there to destroy all those things and wreck all those
things and wreak havoc in the land there. And one thing that this that
the Philistines didn't want was for the Israelites to be able
to fight. They didn't want them to fight.
It's a picture, we'll see in the next verse, it's a picture
of they didn't want the gospel declared there. Because the flesh
never wants the gospel. They don't want to hear the gospel
because the gospel is the offensive weapon that the Spirit uses to
destroy the vain imaginations that man sets up in his heart
and mind against Christ against trust in Christ look verse 19
now there was no Smith right no blacksmith found throughout
all the land of Israel for the Philistines said lest the Hebrews
make themselves swords or spears right they didn't want that's
a picture of the gospel and the Philistines will do everything
to keep you from hearing the gospel And finding any excuse
to not hear the gospel and not to trust the message of the gospel,
which is Christ. To believe Him. Because the gospel
is what cuts down those imaginations, right? That exalt themselves
against the knowledge of God, which is Christ. Christ is my
Savior for you. Look to Him. Verse 20, but all
the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen every
man his share, and his colter, and his axe, and his mattocks. They made sure that the false
gospel was there. That was fine. Come on down for the false gospel
to come and hear lies. By all means, you can hear that,
but don't let them have the true gospel. Make sure that's not
in the land. Yet, verse 21, they had a file
for the mattocks. and for the coulters, and for
the forks, and for the axes, and to sharpen the goads, right?
This is Israel the same, yet they had a file to do some sharpening,
right? And I take that to mean the Lord
always has a remnant. He has a remnant, according to
the election of grace, to gather his people to, to hear that blessed
word, which puts our eyes off of the flesh and turns us once
again to the Lord Jesus Christ, where he sharpens that faith
and hope which he gives to every one of his people. He'll bless
you. He keeps you. He ensures that
you have that food and nourishment to be kept in this wilderness
against all our enemies. It's the Lord Jesus Christ, the
captain of our salvation. So Saul tried to give Samuel
excuses for his rebellion and turning from the commandment
of God, which is to believe Christ, to trust him. But Samuel said
there will be no excuses. He's declared to us Christ. He's
shown us our Savior. God has given you his gospel
command concerning his blessed salvation by his Son. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. Believe that word of God. Trust
him and cry out to him And He'll make it known to the hearts of
His people. It pleases Him to glorify the Son, just as it pleases
the Son to glorify the Father. And so He'll do that in your
hearts. I pray He does that for every one of us that are here
tonight. I pray He blesses us. Amen.