We're going to 1 Samuel chapter
12, and we're reading from verse 14. And this little sermon to
the young people is called The Good and the Right Way. These were words that Samuel
used as he was giving this farewell address to the children of Israel. 1 Samuel chapter 12 and verse
14. And Samuel is speaking to the
children of Israel and he says, if ye will fear the Lord and
serve him and obey his voice and not rebel against the commandment
of the Lord, then shall both ye and also the king that reigneth
over you, that is Saul, continue following the Lord your God. But if ye will not obey the voice
of the Lord, but rebel against the commandments of the Lord,
then shall the hand of the Lord be against you, as it was against
your fathers. Now therefore stand and see this
great thing which the Lord will do before your eyes. Is it not
wheat harvest today? I will call unto the Lord, and
he shall send thunder and rain, that he may perceive and see
that your wickedness is great, which ye have done in the sight
of the Lord, in asking you a king.' So Samuel called unto the Lord,
and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day, and all the people
greatly feared the Lord and Samuel. And all the people said unto
Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we
die not, for we have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask
us a king. And Samuel said unto the people,
Fear not, ye have done all this wickedness, yet turn not aside
from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your
heart. and turn ye not aside, for then
should ye go after vain things which cannot profit nor deliver,
for they are vain. For the Lord will not forsake
his people for his great name's sake, because it hath pleased
the Lord to make you his people. Moreover, as for me, God forbid
that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you,
but I will teach you the good and the right way. Only fear
the Lord and serve him in truth with all your heart, for consider
how great things he hath done for you. But if ye shall still
do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. Some people call this Samuel's
farewell address to the children of Israel and rightly so because
that is what it is. He delivered it after Saul had
gained victory against the Ammonites. We thought about that on a previous
occasion. And had been acknowledged as
king with a great celebration. So people were unsure about Saul. They were unsure whether he was
going to be a good king, whether he was going to be an able king.
And the Lord gave Saul a victory over Nahash the Ammonite and
as a result of that he was better recognised amongst the people
as a suitable king. Samuel gathered all the people
together, they re-established the kingdom and acknowledged
Saul again as their king with much greater enthusiasm now that
he had won this battle and Samuel made this address to the people
at that time. But even although we call this
his farewell address, it doesn't mean that we're not going to
be hearing from Samuel again. And he's still got things that
he's going to do amongst the children of Israel and his dealings
with Saul and his dealings with other people as well. And we'll
come to that in the coming weeks. But as far as addressing the
children of Israel in their entirety, this is kind of like a farewell
speech that he is making here. And we'll remember that Samuel
had been, over many years, God's representative to the people
and the face of God's government as a judge and as a prophet amongst
the people. And now this was coming to an
end because the people had said, we don't want this form of government
anymore, we don't want Samuel to be a judge in the land, we
want a king of our own who will lead us into battle with our
enemies. And King Saul, having been appointed,
now had full charge of the government of the new kingdom of Israel,
the combined tribes of Israel. But like a good preacher, Samuel
did not leave the scene, leave the stage, this public stage,
without once again reminding the people of both their sin
and their need. He didn't leave without telling
them one more time that their decision to choose a king rather
than follow the Lord's path was wrong and unwise. Samuel, Also in this little speech,
we didn't read it all together, but we read the end part of it. Samuel also in this speech drew
from the people a public acknowledgement of his own personal integrity,
his own personal truthfulness and honesty in the administration
of justice and government throughout his long life of service. Now he didn't do that to get
himself praise or in order to get some sort of accolade for
himself. But he did it to remind the people
that he had faithfully fulfilled his duty. And he wanted the people
to acknowledge that, that he had faithfully fulfilled his
duty. The purpose or the reason seems
to have been that their action in choosing Saul as king was
not because Samuel had failed to do his job. Samuel knew that our human nature
always tries to blame someone else for our bad decisions and
for our wrong actions. Have you noticed that there's
always a good reason for doing something bad? There's always
a good reason for doing something bad. And these people had to be shown
that they could not blame Samuel for their desire to have a king.
Samuel had done his work. honestly, faithfully, and with
a great power from the Lord. So he drew this public testimony
and he put it in a public register to record effectively where the
true blame lay. And he also called the people
to remember how faithful the Lord had been to their forefathers
despite the frequent acts of rebellion that the earlier generations
had made towards God. And he warns these people that
if they rebel against God, then like their forefathers, they
would feel his anger and they would be punished as well. And
just to show that he wasn't simply making these things up, that
he had the authority of God, which the miracles often display
in scripture. They show the authority and the
power of God. Samuel prayed for rain to fall
upon the land in a great storm so that all of the people might
know that his displeasure was not only his, but it was the
Lord's as well. It was harvest time in Israel. And it never, never rained in
Israel at this time of the year. So this storm was very unusual. It was unexpected. and it damaged
the crops that were being gathered in from the fields at this time. The storm showed God's power
to control the weather, but it showed more than that. It showed
the ease with which God could destroy their crops, bring in
a famine, and damage the land, and bring ruin to the people.
So it was a picture, a very real picture, of the judgements that
could come from the Lord. And we're reminded by this that
nature is God's servant and sometimes we see terrible things happening
in the world through storms or floods or fires. nature is God's
servant and in past times the Lord used the weather to warn
and punish disobedience as well as to defend and bless his people
and the Lord doesn't change so we should see even the climate
changes, even the evidences of natural phenomena in this world
as being directly from the hand of the Lord. The chapter ends,
the chapter that we read together, ends with a reminder of God's
grace and mercy. For although there is judgment
for sin, there is also mercy with the Lord that he may be
feared. And it is true, the Lord will
judge sin. Our God is holy. and he will
not and he cannot tolerate sin without bringing judgment upon
it. So Samuel warns the people not
to turn from the Lord, not to follow vain things or imagine
that they can live without God. These are good lessons. Let us
not turn from the Lord. Let us not Follow the vanities
of this life. I don't know what those might
be. They may be different for you than they are for me. the
pastimes of this world, the entertainments of this world, the values of
this world. They're a vanity. And though
we have to engage in the world to some extent, let us remember
always to give the principal place of honour in our lives
to our God, who is holy, and to the Lord Jesus Christ. Turn
ye "'Not aside,' said Samuel, "'turn ye not aside. "'For then
should ye go after vain things "'which cannot profit nor deliver
for their vain.'" However, Samuel also couples this with a promise
of help and a promise of mercy. And he reminds the people of
God's faithfulness. In verse 22, for example, he
says, Not because of anything in those people. God will be
faithful because of his own name's sake. He will
be faithful for his own honour because he is a faithful God
and he cannot deny himself. So for his name's sake means
for his own purposes, for his own honour and God will not forsake
his people whom he loves. because it would just go against
the very nature of God, the holiness of God, the faithfulness of God
to do such a thing. The Lord will not forsake his
people for his great name's sake because it hath pleased the Lord
to make you his people. And these two verses, 21 and
22, they summarise very well the history of the
Old Testament people. God chose to bless this people
and yet they repeatedly and willfully rebelled against God and chose
their own way and rejected God's way. And when the Lord brought
judgment on them, like a good parent should, they returned
for a little while but not really, because their hearts are inherently
wicked. But that said, God does not forget
his promises, and he was faithful to preserve. Out of these disobedient
Jewish tribes, he was faithful to preserve a remnant people
amongst the disobedient Jews by whom he will accomplish his
purpose, fulfill his promises, and most importantly of all,
provide a Redeemer to bring about those things which he had promised
to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. A mighty nation that would
cover the whole earth, that would be brought into peace with God
and receive salvation from God by the coming Messiah through
the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is lovely to see the way
in which Samuel both confronts the people with their sin and
their disobedience, advises them the proper way to go, and yet
assures for those who have faith and trust in God that the Lord
will be faithful to them and he will bring about their salvation
as he has promised. And here we see the true heart
of the prophet Samuel. Even when he had been shunned,
even when he had been rejected by these Jews amongst whom he
had faithfully laboured and willingly served, he says, God forbid that
I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you, but
I will teach you the good and the right way. As he always had
from being a little child, even to the old age that he now was,
he had prayed for the people, he had served the people well,
and he had taught them the good and the right way. He tells them
what the good and the right way is in verse 24 and 25. He says, fear the Lord. That
means honour him, respect him, serve him, follow him. Fear the
Lord and serve him in truth with all your heart. For consider
how great things he hath done for you. But if ye shall still
do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king. These words of Samuel still teach
us the good and right way. We should honour the Lord, we
should serve the Lord, we should remember the Lord. We should
remember his mercy and all the great things that he has done. We should, but oh how hard it
is to do that. Sometimes we say to ourselves,
I'm going to honour God and serve him in truth with all my heart. But soon we find that our heart
is deceitful and our heart is wicked and that our heart doesn't
lead us in the way that sometimes our mind says we want to go.
Our sinful nature blocks our best intentions and prevents
us from being truthful with God. We try, but we're weak and we
fail. And after a while, most people
just stop trying. And the history of the Jews that
we see in these passages, for example, in the life of Samuel,
the history of the Jews is intended to teach us not to rely on our
own strength. That's what the people did repeatedly,
time after time after time, they relied on their own strength
and they ended up wandering away after vain things. The message
that Samuel is teaching here is that we are to look beyond
ourselves, beyond our own abilities, and we are to look to the Messiah. We are to look to the Lord Jesus
Christ, to God's appointed way of life and salvation. Because
the Lord Jesus Christ is the one, the only one, ever, who
served God in truth and by whom God's will and holiness is honoured
and upheld. So if we would serve God, if
you want to serve God in truth, we must lay down our own efforts
and our own works and trust in Christ's sacrifice. We trust
in Christ's sacrifice for us and we rest in the work that
he has done because we believe that it alone is well-pleasing
to God. And notice how Samuel promised
that he would continue to pray for the people and to minister
to them for good, even although they had rejected him. In this
we see a lovely type of the Lord Jesus Christ as well. Our Saviour
loves his people and he has loved us when we never loved him. He represented us, he prayed
for us, he continues to intercede for us. and he has done everything
needful for our salvation and deliverance from sin. He has
won for us all the blessings of God, all the inheritance of
glory, all the privileges of being called the people of God. Flow to us, come to us from the
Lord Jesus Christ. We don't earn any of these things
by ourselves. They are all the gift of God's
grace. And as these Jews looked at Samuel,
they saw a man who had been faithful to his calling. And some of them, a remnant amongst
them, some of them who possessed true faith would see in Samuel
a picture of one who was yet to come, the promised Messiah,
who like Samuel would teach his people the good and right way
and pray for them and represent them before God his Father. And today, men and women and
boys and girls who have faith continue to see the Lord Jesus
Christ as the one who leads us in the good and right way. He is the way of life and truth
and the way of righteousness to his people. In Christ, we
have life and grace and mercy from God because Christ has done
all things well. And let me just make one last
point and then we're done today. Let us not fail to notice God's
promise of judgment on all who do not trust in Christ. All who
do not trust in him as the good and right way. The same message
that Samuel gave to the people of his day is still relevant
today. If ye shall still do wickedly,
ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king. Wicked is all
we can do because of our fallen nature and evil heart. That's
all we can do, it's all that we can offer God. So go ahead
and try and please God your way if that's what you want to do.
But you will fail, just as Israel failed, century after century,
all through its history. And judgment must follow. If you choose your own way, it
will lead to death. Samuel pointed to the good and
right way, which is faith in Christ and trusting in his completed
work on the cross. May the example and witness of
these Old Testament accounts speak to us all today, warn us,
teach us, and bring us to the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and
Saviour. Amen.