I want to get the subject down
there in verse 2, the last line in that verse. It says, and all
the house of Israel lamented after the Lord. We'll talk about
lamenting after the Lord. You remember that the Lord cursed
the Philistines when they had the ark. They sent it back to
Israel. and then the men of Bethshemeth,
they looked in it, took the ark off, the lid off of it, and God
smote 50,000 and 70 of them. They couldn't bear the presence
of God's ark. And they asked, who is able to
stand before the Holy Lord God? And then who's going to come
and go up before us? So they said, listen, the Philistines
brought the ark back to us. They told the men of Kirtjar,
come here and get this ark. Come here and get it. And Achilles
says there in verse 1, and the men of Churcham came up and fetched
the ark of the Lord. Fetched the ark of the Lord.
And then look what it says, they brought it into the house of
Abinadab and sanctified Eleazar his son. Set his son apart to
keep the ark of the Lord. To tend to the ark of the Lord.
Make sure nobody dishonored the Ark of the Lord, made sure that
no one, that the Ark of the Lord was treated as it ought to be,
ought to be. And then it says down there that
it abode, that it abode in Kirtjath-Jerim that the time was long for it,
was 20 years. Stayed down there 20 long years
in the same place. Now 20 years is a long period
of time. 20 years is a long period of
time in anyone's life. If a child would have been born
when they put that down there and took it down there and sanctified
Eliezer, he'd have been 20 years old at this time. If you'd been
20, you'd have been 40. If you'd been 40, you'd have
been 60. So 20 years is a long period in anybody's life. And
what Israel had done, they had idolatry mixed in with the worship
of God. And they were in a bad way for
20 years and would have continued in that way had not the Lord
intervened and put something in their heart. And that's what
it says, that it was there for 20 years and all the house of
Israel lamented after the Lord. How come they didn't do that
before? Why did they wait 20 years to
do it? What was wrong with them? Because
they had idolatry mixed in with it. So God intervened. God moved in their hearts. God
touched their hearts. And they began to lament after
Him. While they were in idolatry, the Philistines ruled over them.
They were under their rules. And then they began to lament.
And this word lament means to wail. It means to weep. It means to make a great noise.
It means to really cry out. And they began to lament. They
began to wail. They began to weep. They began
to call out. Why? Because they were oppressed.
Oppressed by the Philistines. Held under bondage by the Philistines. Have you ever felt oppressed?
Have you ever felt oppressed by unbelief? Have you ever felt
oppressed by temptations? Have you ever felt oppressed
by sin? Have you ever felt oppressed by things that you think, say,
or do? Well, they were oppressed. And I tell you a lot, I don't
know about you, but occasionally I get oppressed with unbelief. I get oppressed by a hard heart.
I get oppressed by a cold heart. Shirley and I was talking about
it. How in the world can a believer have such a cold heart sometimes? How can their heart be so hard
sometimes? And it's an oppression to you.
You don't delight in it. You groan over it. You lament
it. And that's what they were doing.
But they became convinced that only one person could help them.
And that was the Lord. And that's why all the house
of Israel lamented after the Lord. They began to cry after
the Lord. And why in the world? They were
convinced that only the Lord could help them. But why should
He help them? Because He heard them. Because
He heard them. Because He loved them. And He
heard their cries. He heard their lamentations.
And it says that they come off to him. Then look what happens.
In verse 3. Samuel spake unto all the house
of Israel. Now this is the first time Samuel
has spoken since chapter 3 when he said, Speak, Lord, thy servant
heareth. He had never spoken until this
time. This is the first time we see Samuel. First time Samuel
is speaking. And Samuel, he says this. say unto all the house of Israel
if you do return unto the Lord and he gives us several things
and this is talking about repentance now this is talking about repentance
now he said if you return to the Lord the first thing you
have to do you gotta do it with all your hearts you can't keep
back anything about your heart God looks on the heart. God's
issues of life come out of the heart. And he says, you know,
when you come to the Lord, go return to it. You got to come
with the heart and all the heart. You can't hold part of it back.
And it's the heart that the Lord looks on. And then look what
else he said. Put away all the strange gods. and asteroids from among you.
That's the second thing they've got to do if they're going to
turn. You can't come to God and have another God. You can't come
to God and have anybody else between you and Christ. And that's
what he's telling them. These people, you know, he said,
put away these strange gods. And any God but the God of the
Bible, any Christ but the Lord Jesus Christ, any salvation but
what He provides is absolutely strange. And every time you find
in the New Testament, three times it talks about strange. First
of all, the Lord Jesus Christ, He was preaching, they said,
this man bringeth us strange doctrine. And then over, and
said, we've seen strange things today. And then over in Acts,
Paul was preaching and he said, he seems to be a setter forth
of strange gods. And then he talks about in Jude,
that there's strange flesh. And so here we're talking about
put away the strange gods. These people, their heart was
cool. Their heart was too cool for
God. And listen, and I'm going to say this, and I hope you understand
what I'm saying. There are people, when their
heart gets cool or cold, they go hear a false gospel. They
can hear it on the radio. They can go to a service and
hear it. They can sit and listen to somebody talk about it. And
they can listen to a false gospel which presents a false God. And
they don't take it personally. They don't take it personally.
They aren't jealous or zealous for the gospel. They aren't in
it for the honor of Christ. And the false, when they hear
it, this false gospel, when they hear it, it don't rile them up.
It don't rile them up. This comes from a hard, cold
heart. When I hear a false gospel, it
stirs me up. When I hear somebody, a man,
I'll tell you, Trey, that him and his wife started coming here
Sunday. You know, he's probably listening. I hope I don't upset
him. But his mother had been at Pentecostal all her life. And she wrote him and told him
about, you know, said, I prayed for you all your life, you know,
and he told her what the Lord did for prayed for you all your
life. And I know the Lord's going to save you because you know,
I said, I remember when I had my experience, he wrote right
back and said, if all you got is an experience, it's false. And God didn't save me because
you prayed for me. He saved me for Christ's sake.
And he took his mother to task and said, if all you got is an
experience that you had 30 years ago, and you think God's going
to answer your prayers and save sinners for your sake, then you're
a bad, bad mistake. And God does what he does for
Christ's sake. His own mother stirred him up. And if we can sit around and
listen to a false gospel, and listen to strange gods, and it
don't rile us up, then we've got a very, very cool heart.
That's what happened to Simon Peter. You know, he went over
and warmed his hands at the enemy's fire while Christ was being tried
not far distance from him. And oh, that's why he said, you
know, that's what he said in first Thessalonians. We turned
from our idols to serve the living God. You cannot come to Christ
with an idol. You can't come to Christ with
an experience. You can't come to Christ because
you can't come to Christ. Only way you can come to Christ
is empty and nothing you got. Then he says, return unto the
Lord. You can't return if you never
left. He told Ephesians there in Revelations,
you've left your first love. And I do know this, when men
turn unto the Lord, Then they see just how strange the gods
they had were. When your heart returns unto
the Lord, then you say, my goodness, you mean I believe that? I worship
that? I did those things? Yep. Yep. And you just really see
how strange the gods were. And then look what else he says
now. Down in the last part of verse 3. He said, and prepare
your hearts. Prepare your hearts. What in
the world is he talking about here? He said, oh, your heart,
that's where your affections are. That's where your will is.
That's where your understanding is. And he's saying here, fix
your heart on Him. Keep 1 Samuel. Look in Psalm
57. Psalm 57. Look at Psalm 57. You know, and
what it means here is that your heart is fixed on the Lord. Don't
have a divided heart. He said, Oh Lord, give me a single
heart. Let not my heart be divided.
But down here in verse 7, look what He said here now. Prepare
your hearts. And God's already began working
on their hearts so they wouldn't have lamented after the Lord.
And this is what repentance is. It's what we're talking about.
You've got to get rid of your strange gods. And oh my, you've
got to, your heart, your whole heart, you've got to come to
Christ with it. And then with your affections,
with your will, your understandings. But here in verse 7, my heart
is fixed. Oh God, my heart is fixed. And in the margin said, it's
prepared for what? For you. I will sing and give
praise. That's what my heart is prepared
to do. That's what my heart is willing
and ready to do. And I say this, people say, well,
God makes you a robot. I wish he would make me a robot.
I wish he would. I wish he would take such control
of me. I wish I was a puppet on a string
and God was pulling strings. Oh my. Then I would have to deal
with me. But that's not the way it is.
And then look what he said here and not only that. Prepare your
hearts unto the Lord and listen to this. And serve the Lord only. Serve Him only. Not the Lord
and mammon. Not the Lord And you're doing,
it's not the Lord and your prayer, not the Lord in anything, the
Lord only. The Lord alone. Serve the Lord
alone. And I'll tell you what, Christ
must be our all in all. And Christ is our all in all
and Christ is not to be the first or the second or the most important. He is our life. We cannot do, I can't do without
Christ. I can't. And then look what he
says in the last part of that verse, and he will deliver you
out of the hands of the Philistines. And that's a promise. He said,
the Lord will deliver you. The Lord will save you. And that's
a promise. That's not. That's, you know,
he said, I'll save you. I'm going to save you out of
the hand of your enemies. That's what it says. Now look
down verse four. They obeyed. The children of
Israel obeyed. Then the children of Israel did
put away Balaam, Ashtoreth, and served the Lord only. Oh, listen. They obeyed. They saw that the
false gods could not deliver them. Only God could. Only free and sovereign grace,
if I can say it that way, could save them. Only the scriptures
alone is what God uses only Christ alone and faith alone and grace
alone and this is all a man needs and if this ain't enough then
nothing will never be enough oh my and they understood clearly
that only God could help them and he said I'll deliver you
and they obeyed and put away them strange cops and then look
what happens here in verse 6 this is a strange thing now I tell
you what and they gathered together and Samuel said unto all Israel
and Mizpah gather together and I'll pray for you unto the Lord
and they gathered together the Mizpah and drew water and poured
it out before the Lord now what in the world is this talking
about when they took a bunch of water and got the water and
then poured it out That signifies them emptying
themselves. Just pouring themselves out to
the Lord. Just emptying themselves, you
know. And they have nothing left. And they just poured themselves
out. And that's what this signifies
when they poured out the water. And oh, that's what they did.
And then look what it says. Now here's true repentance right
here. And he went on down there and
said, in verse six, we have sinned against the Lord. And poured
out that water before the Lord, poured out themselves before
the Lord. And they said, we have sinned against the Lord. And
that's what true repentance is, confessing sin. They didn't say
we committed sins. They said, we sinned. We sinned
against the Lord. And that's where all sin ultimately
is against. It's against God. David said
it's against thee and thee only that I have sinned and done this
evil in thy sight. Now look over here and Hosea
is right after the book of Daniel. You go to the book of Daniel
and Hosea is right after the book of Daniel. And let's look
at Hosea 14. And look what he says over here.
Hosea 14. All true repentance is confessing
sin. Now I'll tell you something,
beloved. There's no way we could confess every sin we've ever
committed. That'd be impossible. We couldn't. We commit so many sins that we're
not even conscious of. We're not even conscious of.
But oh, we do confess. Lord, we're sinners. We do confess. That Lord, if you don't save
us, we won't be saved. We do confess that in this flesh
dwells no good thing. We do confess that our sin is ultimately against
the Lord. But look what he said here in
Hosea 14. O Israel, return unto the Lord
thy God, for thy is fallen by thine iniquity. Your sin is what
caused you to fall. Your iniquity is what caused
you to fall. Take with you words and turn unto the Lord. That
means turn to the Lord, calling on Him. Take your words. Come
with words of contrition. Words of humility. Words of confession. Take with you words unto the
Lord. Say unto Him, take away all iniquity. Take away our sin. And listen
to this, and receive us graciously. Oh, please receive us graciously. Take away our sin. Take away
our iniquity. We can't. We fail by it. But
Lord, take away all this sin that we've got. And receive us
graciously. And if so, we will render the
calves of our lips. We will render the sacrifices
of our lips. And listen to this. Asher shall
not save us. We will not ride upon horses.
Neither will we say any more to the work of our hands. You
are our God. For in thee the fatherless findest
mercy. This is what he says. I will
heal their backsliding. I will love them freely for mine
anger is turned away from him. And I will be as the dew unto
Israel, he shall grow as the lily and cast forth his roots
as lemonade. Oh my, receive us graciously. Come to us graciously, Lord.
And oh, that's what he's talking about, repenting, return. We
fell by our iniquity, Lord, take it away and receive us graciously. And then look what happens. and verse 7 here back over in
chapter 7 look what happens here and when the Philistines heard that the children of Israel
were gathered together to misbehave the lords of the Philistines
went up against Israel and when the children of Israel heard
it they were afraid of the Philistines now I will tell you something
the Philistines enemies Enemies of Israel. The Philistines will
always be opposed to people turning to the Lord. They will. You know, they don't want you
to turn to the Lord. The enemies don't want you to.
And then the children of Israel were afraid. But look what happened. Look what happened. And this
must be persevered in. And the children of Israel said
to Samuel, cease not to cry unto the Lord for us,
that he will save us out of the hand of the Philistine. Cease
not! This is what must be persevered in. Cease not! This is what we
have to cry out. Oh Lord, if you don't save us,
save us. Cry unto the Lord for us. This
is urgent. Cry out! And they cried out of
an intense need. And oh, listen, that's what we
mean. We must persevere in this business
of ceasing not to cry unto the Lord. We must always, always
seek Him. And they cried out of an intense
need. And look what He said. And they
said, pray for us, cease not to cry unto the Lord our God
for us. Now listen to this, that He will save us. That's everything
we believe. What is it that we believe? Our
great need is salvation and only God can save us. Lord you save
us and salvation is of the Lord from Alpha to Omega. And that's
why they said pray that the Lord will save us. Save us. God who has saved us and called
us with the Holy Call. not according to our words but
his own purpose and grace given us in Christ before the world
began okay so they began to cry out unto God and asked Samuel
to do it what's the first thing they did when they began to call
on the Lord when they went to crying out to the Lord verse
9 the first thing they did you know what they did they offered
sacrifice Samuel took a sucking lamb And offer it for a burnt
offering wholly unto the Lord. You want God to save you? We've got to have a sacrifice.
We've got to have a lamb. We've got to have a blood shedding.
And that's what Samuel did. He went and got him a lamb. A
sucking lamb. Took it off of his mama and took
it and offered it as a burnt offering unto the Lord. And salvation
comes to sinners, salvation comes to us through the Lamb, through
the Lamb of God. And when you find out, Scott
Richardson used to say that they laid their hand on the head of
the sacrifice over Leviticus. He said that means that they
leaned hard on the head of that. I mean they put their weight
on it because their sins is going to be put on it. And so we have
to put all our weight, all ourselves, all our souls, all our hopes
on the Lord Jesus Christ, God's blessed Lamb. And oh, listen
to what it said. And Samuel cried unto the Lord
for Israel. Look what it says now. And the Lord heard him. And the Lord heard him. You know what? He always does. He always hears our cries. And
I'll tell you something. He never answers it with a no.
Never answers with a no. And now look what happened after
they offered that sacrifice, verse 10. Samuel is offering
up the burnt offerings and the Philistines said, boy, here they,
we got, we sneak up on them. We're going to get them now.
And they come up there and near the battle against Israel. But
the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the
Philistines. Discomforted them. And they were
smitten. Now I tell you, when you hear
thunder, I've heard some thunder. Oh, I'm telling you what, they
just, boom, hear that stuff coming. Well, God thundered this day.
God made such a noise. He thundered and then a great
thunder. He made such a shaking, such
a noise that those Philistines, oh my, so they said, what in
the world is happening? What's going on here? And they
took off running. And they took off running and
look what happens. And Israel started smiting them. They started
killing them. before they were afraid God put
the enemy to flight God put their enemies to flight and they went
and started smiting them smiting them oh my and they all Israel
smote them they were discomfited they went to flee and look what
happened here in verse 11 I know I got to hurry and the men of
Israel went out of out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines and
smoked them until they came to Bethkar. And after the battle's
over, you know, after they'd done all the Philistines had
run, they went after them. After the battle's over, they're
ready to fight now. You know, that's us. That's us. You know the only reason we fight?
Because the battle's already been won. And you know who we fight more
than anybody else? Ourselves. Look over at 1 Samuel
17. Oh, we'll run after these guys.
They're ready to fight now. Before there's afraid, but oh
God, discomfort them. Look in 1747. Oh my. And oh, we fight the good fight
of faith. You know why? Because the battle's
already won. Battles already won. And oh,
look what he says there. And this is David going out to
face old Goliath. Going out to face that giant.
And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with
sword and spear, for the battle is the Lord's, and He will give
the end to our hands. Oh, listen. God ain't going to
save us with sword or spear. He's going to save and everybody's
going to know that He's the one who saves us. The battle is the
Lord's. Whenever you think you've got
a battle to fight, I'm telling you what, with yourself or with
anything going on in your life, you think you've got a battle
to fight, just back up. And say, Lord, it's your fight.
It's your battle. And you're going to have it.
You take care of it. You defeat this. Because I certainly can't.
And you know what? He'll do it. The battle is the
Lord's. And then look what happens now.
And then Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizrahi and
Shen and called the name of it Ebenezer. And that means the
stone of help or saying hitherto the Lord helped us. Hitherto,
up to this time, up to this point, all the way from the time we
were in Egypt up to this point, the Lord has saved us, the Lord
has helped us. Hitherto hath the Lord helped
us, brought us up to this place. Salvation from before, from Egypt,
the Lord has helped me. And then he says, and the Lord
hath helped us. And he's going to continue. They
put that Ebenezer up there. And that's what it says in that
old hymn we sang. He has raised our Ebenezer. And I tell you what, from now
on, the Lord hath helped me. You know where he helped us at?
He helped us in the covenant of grace before the foundation
of the world. He helped us when His Son came
into this world and became flesh. He helped us when He died for
us as a sacrifice. He helped us when He was raised
up from the dead. He helped us when He ascended
up on high and sat on the throne. He helped us when He regenerated
us and gave us grace and faith to believe Him. He helped us
to repent. He helps us to persevere. And He helps us in His interceding
for us. And you know where we're going
to have the best help at? In the Judgment Day. When the Judgment Day comes,
oh listen, what a help, He has helped us already at that Judgment
Day. The Lord has, the Lord does,
and He will help us. The Lord shall help us and that
right early. Now look what happens now. Verse
13 and I'll wind this thing up bring another message from it
next Wednesday God willing So the Philistines were subdued
the enemy was subdued They were we up They was made powerless
their power was broken and that tells us that sin shall not have
dominion over us our enemies shall not have power over us
and And then down there in verse 14, the cities which the Philistine
had taken from Israel were restored. What the enemy take, God give
it back. He restored it to them. Christ
hath restored that which he took not away. Life was taken away,
He gave it back. Peace with God was taken away,
He put it back. And look what it says, and there
was peace between Israel and Tate. Restored? God restores
it and then He brings peace. He establishes peace in our heart. Peace in our hearts. Oh my. Lamenting after the Lord. And
that's where it starts. You've got to want Christ more
than anything. You've got to need Christ more
than anything. Let's take our healing books
and turn to 17. Let's stand together and sing
this. And after this song, you'll be at liberty to go. But this
is 17. Here I raise mine Ebenezer, that
by thy help I'm come. and I hope by thy good pleasure
safety too arrive at home. Come thou fount of every blessing
to my heart to sing thy praise streams of call forth songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet
sung by flaming tongues above. Praise the mountain fixed upon Jesus saw me with wandering from the fold of God. He, to rescue me from danger,
interposed His precious blood. Oh, to grace, how great a debt,
heavy I'm constrained to pay. Good night and God bless you
and I'll see you