The Essence of True Freedom
1 Samuel 4:1
Opening Prayer
“Father, it is a great privilege we have to come
together to study Your Word. It is a great privilege that we have Your Word. We
have it in our language. We have an abundance of translations that for the most
part are pretty good. They can give us pretty good insight into Your plan and purpose for history and Your plan of
salvation.
Father, as we study Your Word, we recognize that You as the Creator of all things, both the physical as well
as the social and spiritual, have established certain laws, certain absolutes
that run true within Your Creation, even within a fallen creation. When we live
in accordance with those principles, then we live in harmony with them. We can
be blessed. We can experience success in life when we are doing it by the Holy
Spirit and that which is produced in our life has eternal value.
Father, we pray, as we study Your Word tonight, as we
focus on what You have revealed in the Old Testament
here You have numerous principles that are laid out with reference to
government, with reference to how political leadership should conduct itself.
We learn from the Scripture negatives as well as positives. We learn to think
in terms of Your Word. As believers we are not to just form opinions about
government based upon experience, but we are to ground it first and foremost in
Your Word and let that inform our decision making. Tonight, as we study more in
1 Samuel, we pray that you will guide and direct our thinking. We pray this in
Christ’s name. Amen.”
We are at a position between 1 Samuel 3 and 1 Samuel
4 where there is a time gap. As we’ve gone through our study of 1 Samuel
1–3, what we have seen is a focus on the family of Elkanah and Hannah his
wife, who is unable to have children. God is using that negative
circumstance to bring her to a point in her life where she has to depend
exclusively upon Him in order to solve the problem in her life. We’ve studied
how she went to the temple, how she vowed to God that she would give her son:
if God would give her a son, then she would give him back to the Lord to serve
Him. God is using that
to change Israel. God has given them grace, but they have refused that. They’ve
been in disobedience.
We’ve seen that this is part of that horrid period in
Israel’s history, the period of the Judges, where Israel lived more like a
fifth-world pagan nation than they did as the chosen people of God. They were
mired in idolatry and moral relativism. The culture was characterized by a
gross sexual sin. It was characterized by abuse of women. It
was characterized by a priesthood that had become increasingly corrupt, by
political leaders that had become increasingly corrupt, all because they were
willingly ignorant of the Torah. They were willingly disobedient to the
Word of God. The result is that the failure to understand the truth of God’s
Word led to a moral collapse, which led to an economic and a political collapse.
I think that that is important to stress today,
because there are some in the political spectrum in our country who think that
you can divorce morality from economics and politics. Usually they go by the
name of libertarians. Just focus on economics. Just focus on politics. Don’t
worry about the social issues. Don’t worry about same-sex marriage. Don’t worry
about abortion. Don’t worry about these other areas. Just focus on economics
and politics.
But the Word of God says that all of His creation is
interrelated. You can’t do something that is in the spiritual realm that
doesn’t have economic and perhaps physical consequences. You can’t do something
in the physical realm that doesn’t have negative consequences in the spiritual
realm. All these areas
intersect. We don’t live in a world where these are compartmentalized from each
other. We see this under the Torah, under the Old Testament Law. God said that
if you are obedient to Me I will bless you. I will
bring the rains in their season. In other words, spiritual obedience is going
to have a meteorological impact. On the other hand, with spiritual
disobedience, God says He’s going to make the ground dry up, and the sky is
going to be like bronze. It is going to be hot. It is going to be dry. There is
going to be a drought. There is going to be famine. What you see is that
spiritual rebellion has economic consequences.
The same thing is true in our society. When we look
at the economic consequences that come as a result of divorce, that come as a
result of sexual immorality, that come as a result of what happens when men in
a society and young boys in a society become addicted to pornography.
It has an impact economically on a marriage when the
marriage breaks up, the impact on the family, the impact it has on the children
in a family. We can’t separate morality and spirituality from the more physical
areas of economics or legislation, the things of that nature.
You can’t come along and make those kinds of
bifurcations if you are a Christian and you are living in a world that you
believe to be created by God, where everything intersects and everything is
interrelated.
When we come to the Bible, we see that God gives us
instruction in every area of His creation. He created not
only the heavens and the earth, the seas and all that is in them, all
the animals, all of the vegetation.
He created all of that, but He also created certain
social absolutes that, if they are followed, lead to success. It leads to
protection of our culture, the preservation of the culture, the perpetuation of
the culture, such as:
Personal responsibility—Marriage and family, as
we have seen, and—Government and nations.
When those [absolutes] are violated, and when those
things break down, then a culture breaks down.
We see what is going on here in terms of summary, is
that Israel is going to be soundly defeated in this battle. They are going to
lose.
There are actually two parts to the battle. They are going to lose
about 34,000—they are going to have about 34,000 killed. This is a
devastating defeat. But it also leads to their virtual domination by the
Philistines for approximately 20 years.
It is a great lesson in a nation: what leads to that
loss of freedom and what leads to the recovery of that freedom, as we work our
way through the history of that century. It is going to take time. It didn’t
fall apart over night. It isn’t brought back overnight.
We are going to learn some things about the essence
of true freedom. By that I mean it is not just physical, political, economic
freedom, but it is fundamentally a spiritual freedom. If we are not free
spiritually in terms of our obedience to God versus being dominated by our sin
nature, then we can’t have genuine true political or economic freedom.
When we come to the end of 1 Samuel 3, which I did
last week, remember? This is the episode where Samuel is sleeping in the
temple. We see a picture of Eli, who is not in the temple. But Eli is pretty
old at this point. He is pushing 90, the late 80s at least. According to Leviticus
he should have retired at the age of 50. Priests were not to serve beyond the
age of 50. We see again all the breakdowns in the protocols for the service of
the priesthood, how he and his sons are abusing it.
Samuel is sleeping. Three times God calls him. He
runs to Eli thinking it is Eli. Finally Eli says, “Hmmm, it is not me. It must
be God.” He tells him that God is speaking to him.
God will reveal to Samuel, as He has revealed to this
unnamed prophet at the end of 1 Samuel 2, that He is going to destroy the
dynasty of Eli. He is going to bring judgment upon the house of Eli. Never
again will they serve as high priest. Eventually the line is going to die out
from having an active role in the priesthood.
We see Samuel as being somewhat young at that
particular time. He’s probably ten or eleven. Some time goes by before we have
the battle that occurs in 1 Samuel 4.
What I want to do is pause here for a minute and reflect upon some of the issues that we need to be paying
attention to as we go through Samuel, as we think about this period of Israel’s
history.
It is basically a three-part introduction and review
for us before we begin to scratch the surface of the beginning of 1 Samuel 4.
Let’s just look at the outline.
I am working on a printout. Once I get the first seven chapters done
the way I like them, then I’ll put that out so you can follow along. I am
trying to pull this together. In the first seven chapters we see that:
1. YHWH is working to graciously provide a shift, a change in Israel, 1 Samuel
1–7.
The people of Israel are as low as they have ever
been, as apostate as they have ever been, as degraded as they’ve ever been, but
there is still a remnant. You have examples of Elkanah and Hannah. You also
have an example of that unnamed man of God, the unnamed prophet that God sends
to Eli at the end of 1 Samuel 2. There is a remnant, a small core of believers.
God is going to graciously change the direction of Israel and it is going to
take time. He does that first and foremost through the birth of Samuel.
In the next major section we are going to see how:
We see how:
As we see that in 1 Samuel 3, last time we saw how:
This is important. There is a pattern that we see
here. God is going to change things, because He is going to bring a king to
Israel, but we need to pay attention to how God does that. He doesn’t just plop
that king there, because they are not ready for it.
They are in apostasy. They are self-centered. They
are in rebellion against God. If He had brought David on the scene right now
they would not have had the capacity to appreciate David for his spiritual
focus, for his integrity, and for his ability to lead the nation.
God has to conduct some corrective action against the
culture of Israel before they are going to be ready for David.
This is roughly around 1100–1080 BC. We are not sure exactly what those dates are, but it is sometime
during that time period. It is going to be 70–80 years before David
becomes the king. That gives you a lot of hope that you might not see that in
your generation. It takes time to change course. The focus for believers always
has to be on the hope that God gives us.
Introduction 1: First He’s got to call a prophet, a
prophet that is following Him, that is going to have national leadership
qualities. That is Samuel, because Samuel is not only a prophet, but he is also going to be the priest. He is going to be the
judge of Israel. This means he is the most significant figure during this
period of time, but he’s going to be the one who anoints the king.
There is a pattern here that the prophet comes first
and then the king. You see this all the way through the Old Testament. The
prophet is the one who anoints the king.
It is the prophet John the Baptist who precedes and
anoints Jesus the Messiah at His baptism. The point that is illustrated here is
that the king is not out from under the Law. He is under the authority of God.
His appointment comes from God. He is not on his own. He’s not self appointed
or just appointed by the people.
That is what happened when the men of Shechem in
Judges 9 anointed Abimelech as the king of Israel. He reigned over Israel, the
text says, for two years.
But God had absolutely nothing to do with it. He was
just a human viewpoint solution, a human attempt to solve their problems
totally apart from God. It ended up in failure.
Last time as we looked at this we saw that:
This is all under this category:
Ø God (YHWH) preparing deliverance for Israel,
1 Samuel 1–7.
Ø YHWH is going to
collapse the old order [Eli], 1 Samuel 2:11–4:22.
When we get to 1 Samuel 4:
Ø YHWH is going to
cause Israel to be defeated. This is critical in how
God (YHWH) is going to
prepare them for what He is going to bless them with later on.
That happens sometimes in our
individual lives, where God has to take us through a defeat in order to get us
to quit relying upon ourselves, in order to quit relying upon our own
capabilities and sufficiency, and to learn to completely and totally trust God
to provide the solution, 1 Samuel 4:1–22.
YHWH causes Israel to
be defeated, and they are just devastated. One of the reasons they are
devastated is that God allows His Presence to be captured by the Philistines.
The corrupt Philistines are going to capture God. They are going to haul YHWH
off and put Him in a pagan temple.
Then we have one of the most humorous episodes that I
think is in all of the Scripture when we get into 1 Samuel 5. He causes Israel
to be defeated and allows the Ark to be captured to demonstrate His sovereignty
over the enemies of Israel and their gods.
You’d think that just the opposite is what is
happening—that the Philistines have defeated Israel. That means their
gods are greater. But what God is going to do is turn the tables on the
Philistines and demonstrate that He is sovereign, even over the enemies of
Israel.
He is still sovereign, even when they are in defeat
and despair. God is still in control. It is necessary to do this to cleanse
Israel of the corruption of the priesthood.
They have allowed sin in their culture to go
unchecked. There has to be a divine judgment and discipline in order to bring
cleansing to the nation and to get rid of that leaven that has corrupted the
whole loaf of Israel, as it were. That corruption has to be cleaned out.
In the process YHWH is teaching Israel to trust in Him
alone. God multitasks in this. He’s got to teach them
that He is sovereign over their enemies and over the gods of their enemies. He’s
got to cleanse the nation from this stench, this corruption of the house of
Eli. He’s got to teach Israel to trust in Him alone. That gives us an
understanding of where we are headed in 1 Samuel 4. That is just the first part
of the introduction.
Introduction 2: The second part of the introduction
is to review our overview of what is happening historically, because we can get
microscopic toward the details that are going on. But we have to see the flow
of events that are taking place.
We are looking at the seven chapters in 1 Samuel
where God is preparing to graciously deliver Israel from their own bad
decisions, from their own rebellion, from their own idolatry, from their own
sinfulness.
God is going to bring about a great change. But we
have to look at the dynamics. How does God work to bring about this kind of
change? What are the different elements of that?
Part of that involves judging the old order,
cleansing it, and bringing Israel to a point of humility. That doesn’t always
happen. It is not just a clean straight event. We are going to see that in fact
Israel is somewhat obedient under Samuel.
But at the end of Samuel’s judgeship as Samuel is
old, the elders of Israel are going to come to him and say, “We don’t want your
sons. They are pretty corrupt. We don’t want them. There is nobody else.”
Notice, they are not seeking God’s counsel. They said
we want to have a king like everybody else. They think the solution to their
problem is having a king like all of the other nations.
What God is going to do is to show them that when
they want to have a king like all of the other nations, they want to have a
king after their own heart. That is going to lead to failure.
Then God is going to bring in a king after God’s own
heart. He has to prepare them still to appreciate David. Otherwise, in their
rebellion, they would not. The blessing of a godly king would just lead them to
further disaster.
1 Samuel Chapters 1–7 are really the prologue
to the book, the event of Saul’s identification and anointing.
We are reminded that it was always God’s plan for there to be a monarchy, for there to be a king over Israel.
This isn’t something that was a second thought on the part of God. We’ll see
this in a minute. We’ll go to Deuteronomy.
It was God’s plan for them to have a king, but it was
the kind of king God wanted on God’s terms—not a king on their terms, who
was going to be like everybody else’s king.
So often, what we see personally is we want to solve
problems like every body else is solving problems. In problem-solving
when we have a crisis in life, one of the first things we tend to do out of our
sin nature is to just devise our own solution. We generate our own solution,
“This is what I think will work.” We don’t consult the Word of God if we are carnal. We don’t go to the Lord in prayer. We just come up
with our own idea of what will work.
The next thing that happens is that we look to what
other people are doing. What seems to have success? What do people in the world
do when they face this problem?
One example of this is, let’s say somebody has a
problem with addiction. If you have a problem with addiction, then one of the
first things that people do is—let’s go to a 12-Step Program. Let’s go to
AA, or let’s go to whatever it is anonymous—Eater’s Anonymous, Drug
Addict’s Anonymous, or whatever it is. Very few people take the time to analyze those
particular programs. They are not very successful.
I remember I was so surprised about 16–17 years
ago when I was pastoring at Preston City Bible Church watching Good Morning,
America. There is a great cultural analysis program for you. They were
celebrating, at this particular time, the 50th anniversary of
Alcoholics’ Anonymous. I was just stunned when they actually admitted over the
air, if my memory serves me, that the success rate of AA was only 17%.
I immediately thought it is probably that good, or
better, for people who just try to quit on their own—eventually decide to
solve the problem on their own.
Or they go to church, and they get with the Word. And
God the Holy Spirit gives them the strength and the ability to deal with the
problems in their life.
Recently this came up in conversation with some other
pastors. I went back to check my figures. I ran across two or three insightful
articles and studies that have been conducted since then.
One of them said that according to AA’s own sources,
that they have a success rate of about 30%, which I still don’t think is very
good.
The other was an independent study that was
commissioned by a university. They came up with the fact that they had a
7–10% success rate.
If anybody is struggling in areas where they think
that this is the default solution, because I hear Christians say this all the
time, in fact, I have a pastor friend that asked me about this not long ago
because someone in their congregation knew someone, had a friend that had a
problem with alcohol. That was their default solution.
So often, what we find Christians
and pastors do, is they have a sense of helplessness, and that seems to be what
the culture finds success in—let’s get them into a 12-step program.
If you want to investigate that a
little bit and maybe get another side of the story, there is a book by Martin
Bobgan, who was a speaker here at the Chafer
Conference back in 2008. He has a book out called Twelve Steps
to Destruction: Codependency/Recovery Heresies 1st
Edition. He has some very good facts and material in there
on the problems with these types of programs.
But
we have to understand, if we are believers, if we believe that the
Word of God is sufficient, and the grace of God is sufficient, and the
omnipotence of God is sufficient, then God can solve our problems.
There
is no problem we face, there is no addiction we face, there is no
problem, no difficulty that God can’t solve through His Word, applying the Word
of God through the Spirit of God to address the problems we have in life.
We
all have problems. We all have baggage from our sin nature,
whether it is sins we committed before we were saved, or sins we committed
after we were saved. Everybody has that kind of baggage.
But
we have genuine forgiveness at the Cross. We have genuine
forgiveness when we confess our sins. We have the power of God the Holy Spirit
and the Word of God.
But
the issue is, are we really willing to trust?
Are
we willing to follow the example of Peter walking on the water and
just focus every bit of our mind on the Word of God, on the living Word of God,
to solve our problems?
One
of the things we see in this particular section again is how
Israel fails to truly trust, radically trust, in the
power of God. They continue to attempt to solve their problems through their
own efforts.
The
basic problem that we all face, and that mankind has faced since
Adam ate the fruit in the Garden of Eden is what? It is sin. Sin has
consequences. Sin reverberates through the physical areas of our life. It
reverberates through various economic problems, political problems, military
problems, and technology problems.
As
we go through life, as we look at these problems that develop in
our life, we look to some sort of solution. We say, “Well, what does the Word
of God say about solving a technology problem? What does the Word of God say
about drug addiction? I can’t find that in my concordance.”
The
reality is that when we encounter difficulty in life, what we are
rubbing up against is a surface problem. Whether it is addiction, whether it
has to do with sexual identity, whether it has to do with just genuine problems
of our sin nature, we’re deceptive, or we have power lust, or we are totally
self-centered and arrogant. Whatever it is, the surface problem is just that.
That is what we encounter.
What
lays behind that are our more spiritual issues that can only be resolved by dealing with the root problem behind every
one of these. That is our sin nature. As one of the old Pogo comic strips says,
Pogo says, “We’ve met the enemy and he is us.” That is our problem. It is that
internal enemy of the sin nature.
When
we take this to a national level, and we are looking at the problems that any nation faces,
whether we are talking about ancient Israel, we’re talking about modern Israel,
we’re talking about modern America… when we look at the problems that we face,
fundamentally we have to dig beneath the surface and realize that the issues
are always spiritual.
We
can address certain things at a superficial level, but unless we
deal with the underlying causes, then we are never going to have real success.
We’ll just put band-aids on a lot of problems. There is nothing wrong with
putting a band-aid on a problem, but if that’s all we do, then we are not going
to get very far.
You
put a band-aid on the problem that keeps it clean. It keeps dirt
from getting in. It keeps the problem from getting worse, but you have to
address the underlying causes and the underlying problems, which always has to
do with sin.
When
we look at what is going on. We analyze these trends that are
happening in Israel at this particular time. We see that they are in a downward
spiral. If it weren’t for the grace of God they would have just imploded. God
is going to be true to His promise.
We
don’t have a covenant promise in the United States like they did.
There is no covenant promise to Britain. There is no covenant promise to
Australia, or to China, Russia, or any other nation.
The
only nation that has got a covenant promise of God’s protection is
Israel. God has to be true to that promise to preserve them as a nation in
order to bring about His plan of salvation. As we look at this and go forward
we have to recognize that:
1.
What underlies the political dynamics and the cultural dynamics is the
failure to trust in the Word of God. We have to have a high view of Scripture.
By that I mean a radical view that this tells us exactly how we are to think and
exactly how we are to live, that this is God’s revelation to us—the God
who made everything, and He is the one who designed everything to work the way
it works.
The
Word of God is going to provide us with a framework for
understanding every area of human intellection. There is no academic discipline
that is outside of the authority of God’s Word. You can’t go to music, you
can’t go to art, you can’t go to political science, you can’t go to history,
and you can’t go to literature and say this is an area that isn’t addressed by
the Word of God. We have to understand that God’s Word addresses every area.
2.
If God decreed and instituted national entities and human government,
then He is the one who has the right to inform us as to how government and
society should function. He addresses all of these areas.
In
American history, the early American colonists that came over
fleeing religious oppression in England, and fleeing religious suppression on
the continent, came here so that they could study the Word of God and apply it
to every area of their life. You go back and you read those Puritan theologians
and Puritan thinkers. They were thinking profoundly about what the Bible said.
They were going back to the Old Testament and looking at what the Bible said
about what made a culture, a society successful.
What
made it work? What did the Bible say about the role of government?
What could we learn from the Mosaic Law about how a nation was to operate?
There
have been numerous studies done. One study was done by a professor
over at the University of Houston. He and his students devised a program to
analyze the letters, speeches, and the diaries of the founding fathers of
America.
They
discovered that the largest number of quotations (the guy’s name
is Donald Lutz) came from the Bible. It was almost twice as many allusions and
quotations that came from the Bible as came from the number two source, that was John Locke.
The
primary influence upon the founding fathers was the Bible. They
thought within a biblical framework. That doesn’t mean they were all
Christians, but they operated within a Judeo-Christian worldview. They believed
that the Bible gave good information, necessary information, for how a culture
was supposed to live. They understood what we’ve organized as the divine
institutions:
1.
Individual responsibility. Every person is responsible to God.
When
the government steps in, the government is the one who says we’re
going to assume responsibility for peoples’ future. We’re going to assume
responsibility for their welfare. We assume responsibility for their success or
failure in life. That is a violation of individual responsibility.
2.
Marriage. Marriage is to be between a man and a woman who are
designed both physically and in terms of their soul, to merge together in a
unity to fulfill God’s plan and purpose for their life.
3.
Family. Family is the outgrowth of that. It is the production of
marriage. Marriage is the training center for the family. That is a primary
mission given to parents. It is to train and equip their children to be
successful godly adults. All
of those were given before the Fall before there was
sin in human history, and were designed to enable man to fulfill God’s intent
for their life.