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The official audio library of sermons preached at Kingstree Church in Sabina, Ohio.
With our actions, when we sin, we reject Jesus as our king and we reject his good plan of delivering us from our sins. And instead, we follow a king like the nations ourselves. You see, Jesus is your king. Jesus is my king. He's not only saved us from the penalty of sin, but he has saved us from the sins themselves.
Caleb:The following message was recorded at Kingstree Church. May the spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
Sean:We'll be continuing in Samuel. We're in chapter 12 this morning. We're gonna cover chapter 12. Of course, Samuel is a story, and stories are all about context. If you are thinking about what happened early in the story, it makes
Sean:it hard to appreciate what's happening, so I'm gonna begin by quickly reestablishing in
Sean:your mind the context of where we find ourselves in Samuel. The story started with our first main character, Hannah. She was a barren woman, but she prayed to the Lord for a child saying, Lord, if you will give me a child, I will dedicate him before you in service to the Lord. God granted her Samuel, and she made good on her promise, sending Samuel to Shiloh to serve before the ark of the Lord. In chapter two, Hannah offers up this prayer of thanksgiving to God, and included in that prayer are the themes for our book of one and two Samuel.
Sean:Firstly, drew your attention to this idea, this theme of reversal. Institutions or expectations or fortunes being reversed. This rising and falling theme we've already seen play out a number of times in the book of Samuel. We'll see it continuing through the book as well. Then also the theme that God is sovereign through this.
Sean:He's the one who's raising up and bringing down leaders and men's fortunes and futures, God's sovereignty through this story. Then lastly, she established the theme of God's faithfulness to his anointed one, his King, his Messiah, his Christ. Whoever that may be in this book of Samuel, God is going to show faithfulness to him. Well in chapter three we saw Samuel grow into a prophet and we saw the house of Eli falling down and we kind of saw that rising and falling paradigm there. Chapters four through seven accounted for us for how the ark, when it went into exile in Philistia, God showed himself mighty.
Sean:His glorious hand was heavy upon his enemies, conquering the gods of the Philistines, conquering the cities of the Philistines, and eventually the ark returning to Israel with the spoils of war, thus proving that God is the king of Israel who can single handedly do anything they could possibly want a king to do. Yet right on the heels of chapters four through seven came chapter eight where Israel rebels against God and says, We want a king like the nations around us. We want a man to be king. They begin to saal for a king, that Hebrew word for ask or asked for. They ask for a king, and that word becomes a word play because in chapters nine and ten, we're introduced to Saul who ends up being this asked for king.
Sean:The author made clear in his introduction that we don't have a lot of confidence really that Saul is gonna be able to perform this well. Last time I preached in chapter 11, we saw Saul in his ascension to the throne. He received his attestation before Israel where Samuel says, This is your king, and then his confirmation as he defeated King Nahash and delivered Israel from oppression there. Then we ended at this time of coronation where they go to Gilgal and Saul officially comes into his kingship. If you remember also what was going on there is Samuel took the initiative to offer a peace offering and rededicate the nation before the Lord renewing this covenant relationship they had had with the Lord.
Sean:This was necessary because there was a rift in that relationship. Remember when Israel asked for a king, they were denying God as their king, and that needs to be fixed. So that's exactly where we pick up the story today. This what we see in chapter 12 is the event where Saul is crowned king and the people are renewing their relationship before the Lord, and Samuel is addressing the crowd. That's what we're gonna
Sean:see in chapter 12. Now before we get in, I'm gonna approach this a little bit differently than I've approached the previous sermons in this series. If you remember at the beginning of
Sean:the series, talked about three different ways in which I was gonna approach these sermons. One way, kind of the majority, is we focus on the narrative of Samuel as it was written and we see where the narrative takes us. Other times I said I'd place extra emphasis on the connections we see in Christ, the connections that lead to Christ, helping us know him more and seeing how all of scripture points us towards Christ. And then I said sometimes I'd be preaching sermons that focus largely on the examples and the warnings we see in these stories written for our benefit. We get the idea from Paul himself in chapter 10 of one Corinthians where he talks about some of the Old Testament narratives, specifically Israel and the desert, and he says, These things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did.
Sean:He says a little bit later when he's talking about their complaining in the desert, he says, These things happens to them as examples, but they were written down for our instruction. Today in chapter 12 I'm gonna give special attention to how we can understand this passage in light of instruction for us, paying attention to the examples and the warnings that we might glean from this chapter. So now we have the context, we have the roadmap for how we're going to look at this message this morning, and let me pray for us and we'll get right into the text. Father, thank you for the truth of your continued grace to us, continually allowing us to follow you and never forsaking us. Thank you for just all the wisdom you have in the scripture that you allow us to hear it and read it, preach it.
Sean:And Lord I pray for the blessing of your Holy Spirit to allow this word to be received just rightly for each individual as it ought to be planted deep in the hearts of all who hear and may it bear fruit. We pray that in Jesus name by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Sean:Verse one then. Remember this
Sean:is Samuel addressing all of Israel. And Samuel said to all Israel, behold I have obeyed your voice and all that you have said to me and have made a king over you. And now behold, the king walks before you and I am old and gray and behold, my sons are with you. I have walked before you from my youth until this day. Here I am.
Sean:Testify against me before the Lord and before his anointed. Whose ox have I taken or whose donkey have I taken? Or whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed? Or from whose hand have I taken a bribe to blind my eyes?
Sean:Testify against me and I will
Sean:restore it to you. They said, you have
Sean:not defrauded us or oppressed us or taken anything from any man's hand. And he said to them, the Lord is witness against you and his anointed is witness this day that you have not found anything in my hand. And they said, yes. They said he is witness. So Samuel starts by attesting to Israel about his own faithfulness.
Sean:Why does he do that? Well it's interesting, remember chapter eight when Samuel talks about what this king is going to be like. He says, When you ask for this king, he's going to take, take, take. He's gonna take your donkeys and take your men and women, and it's gonna be like an oppression. It's gonna be like you're headed back into slavery.
Sean:We see that contrast exactly with how Samuel had conducted himself. Samuel is showing them, Hey, the judge system that God has before you with God as your king and an appointed judge, this system's working. You haven't lost anything. I haven't taken anything from you, but the system you're moving into is not going to work that well. So in context, we can see Samuel's attestation of his own innocence as an implicit rebuke of the system they're moving into.
Sean:Look how good it's been so far, and it's gonna go downhill from here. After attesting to his innocence, he moves to this time of covenant renewal. Now don't let that word confuse you, covenant. I feel like we use it a lot and don't define it that much. I think an easy way to think of the word covenant is just the rules inside of a relationship.
Sean:Every relationship has rules to that relationship. We're most familiar with the marriage covenant, right?
Sean:And we hear that. We hear the
Sean:rules of that relationship. Stay with each other in sickness and in health for better or for worse, as long as they both live. What they're saying there is the rules of the marriage relationship. That's a covenant. What we're seeing here then with Israel is that they're renewing that covenant relationship with God.
Sean:They're reaffirming that relationship they have with God. Namely they won't turn from him to worthless things. So what you can kind of picture chapter 12 as is kind of like when a husband and wife sometimes have had a falling out, but then renew their vows to one another. That's very similar to what Samuel is doing here. And again, this is necessary.
Sean:Why? It's necessary because they rejected God very seriously in asking for a human to be their king as opposed to him. But to renew the covenant, Samuel first needs to lay out what has gone wrong. Israel needs to take responsibility for what they've done wrong. So what Samuel is going to do now is he lays out a brief history of God's salvation, showing his righteousness and showing how Israel has rejected that salvation and been unrighteous.
Sean:Let me read it for you here. And Samuel said to the people, the Lord is witness who appointed Moses and Aaron and brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt. Notice what he's doing here. He's just recounting essentially from Genesis all the way to the book of Samuel. It's all the story of God's faithfulness and salvation for Israel.
Sean:So he starts again with Jacob in Egypt and then he continues. Now therefore stand still that I may plead with you before the Lord concerning all the righteous deeds of the Lord that he performed for you and for your fathers. When Jacob went into Egypt and the Egyptians oppressed them, then your fathers cried out to the Lord and the Lord sent Moses and Aaron who brought your fathers out of Egypt and made them
Sean:dwell in this place.
Sean:But they forgot the Lord their God and he sold them into
Sean:the hand of Sisera commander of the army of Hazor and into the hand
Sean:of the Philistines and into the hand of
Sean:the king of Moab.
Sean:And they fought against them and they cried to the Lord and said we have sinned because we have forsaken the Lord and have served Baals and Ashtoreth. But now deliver us from the hand of our enemies that we may serve you. And the Lord sent Jeroboam and Barak and Jephthah and Samuel and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side. And you lived in safety. And when you saw that Nahash the king of the Amorites had come against you, you said, No, but a king shall reign over us when the Lord your God was your king.
Sean:And now behold the king whom you have chosen for whom you have asked. Behold the Lord has set a king over you. What we see here is God's righteousness in providing this story of salvation for Israel. Take them out of Egypt, leading them to the promised land, delivering them time and time again from enemies. But they've rejected his plan, they've forgotten him, and often they go to worshiping idols.
Sean:What Samuel does there is he's recounting that pattern you're familiar with through Judges. Remember in the book of Judges, they're saved by God, then they turn to idols for salvation. They're oppressed, and then they return back to God who raises up a judge to deliver them. In fact, Samuel goes through some of
Sean:the judges there starting with Barak and moving all the way to the present day judge, Samuel himself. So this is
Sean:a pattern we gotta think, well what's so different about the most recent apostasy that we've seen here? Why Israel's had this long train of idolatry. Why are they needing to renew the covenant right now? What makes this occasion different? Notice verse 12.
Sean:When Nahash comes against Israel, they break the pattern and that they don't cry out to God anymore like they did in verse eight and verse 10. Rather they cry out, no, but a king will reign over us. You see in the past they'd always turned to their king for salvation, God. God was their king and they at least recognized that enough to turn back to him when they had sinned. What we see here it's different.
Sean:They're no longer turning back to God for salvation. They're rejecting him and demanding something completely new. They want to be saved from their enemies but they want a different source to provide that salvation. Ultimately what they're doing is they're denying God by denying his means of giving salvation to them, him being their king. Now I wanna show you something here.
Sean:As I mentioned Samuel gives Israel a history of God's saving work starting in Egypt bringing them to where they are at the present day when it was written. He highlights God's saving work to draw attention to how they're rejecting God's saving work by asking for their own king, but Samuel is only able to give them a part of the story because the story of God's saving work for his people continues past the book of Samuel right up into the New Testament. So I want you to picture something. I want you to picture this path through the woods. We're gonna say this is God's plan of salvation for his people.
Sean:At the time of Samuel, this path is only partially completed. And so Samuel is walking Israel down this path as far as it goes. He's saying, Remember how God has brought you salvation, but the path ends right here because it hasn't continued into the
Sean:future yet. This is where
Sean:we come into the story because in fact, this narrative path of God's salvation is one that we are all walking in right now. We are right there where the path at the
Sean:end of it, where we see that it
Sean:was leading towards Jesus Christ as God's perfect salvation. It's in continuity with the same story. Let me show you how here. I'm gonna read for you from Acts 13 where Paul walks down that same path as Samuel, but he follows it all the way to its completion. Look at the continuity here.
Sean:Let me read it for you. The God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt, and with uplifted arm he led them out of it. And for about forty years he put up with them in the wilderness, And after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance. And after that he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. Then they asked for a king and God gave them Saul, the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin for forty years.
Sean:You see how so far Paul's been telling the exact same story that Samuel was telling? So he's walked that same path of God's salvation up to the point where Samuel stops, but then he continues on because we know where this path of salvation leads. Let me read to you the rest of the story. And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be king, of whom he testified and said, I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my heart who will do all my will. Of this man's offspring, God has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus, as he promised.
Sean:So I love seeing these two passages together, these parallels together, because it shows that we ourselves are really part of the exact same story that's going on in Samuel. It shows how the whole Bible's a story of God's salvation through Jesus Christ, and what was partial then is complete now. Even as in the book of Samuel, God's desire was to save Israel from their enemies by being their king, so now his desire is to save us from our sins by being our king, Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of God's
Sean:promises. We see then the continuity between us and Israel in
Sean:this story, but this is also where the warning comes in. Because just as Israel was rejecting God by seeking a king of their own desiring like the nations, so we too reject Jesus as our king when we do not submit to him but rather go after our own desires. I'm not talking about losing your salvation here so you can just take that category out of your head. That's not what we're talking about. What I am saying is that practically with our actions when we sin we reject Jesus as our king and we reject his good plan of delivering us from our sins and instead we follow a king like the
Sean:nations, ourselves.
Sean:You see Jesus is your king. Jesus is my king. He's not only saved us from the penalty of sin, but he has saved us from the sins themselves. He not only delivers us from damnation to hell, but delivers us from living a life of slavery to sin by giving us his promised Holy Spirit who allows us to cease from sin and to walk in righteousness.
Sean:But listen, he does this supernatural work through natural means.
Sean:Jesus equips our will and our conscience with the ability to resist sin. He calls us into communities that help to encourage us to love and away from sin, and he tells us what to do. Jesus tells us to be transformed by renewing our mind so that by testing we can discern what is the will of God, what is good and perfect. He tells us to abhor what is evil and to hold fast what is good. He says
Sean:to love one another with brotherly affection. He says to consider one another more significant than ourselves. He says be quick to hear, be slow to speak, be slow to become angry. As we actually do these things that he's told us to, that is our King saving us, delivering us from the sins. Just open the New Testament, look at a passage.
Sean:If it says to do something, then you do it. That is submitting to Jesus' Lordship. That is affirming that he is your king. Why? Because you're submitting to him.
Sean:You're aligning yourself with his plan to deliver you from your sins. We don't think about this often I believe. I don't think we think about this often. But obedience is the primary way Jesus delivers us from the sins we encounter. It's obedience.
Sean:He doesn't give us magical pixie powder that simply makes us stop sinning. He moves in our conscience and in our desires to shape our will, to empower our actions so that by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit we work out obedience. We do what we're told to do. It's Jesus 100%, but what it looks like from our perspective is obeying what he has said. That's how we affirm Jesus as our king.
Sean:Conversely,
Sean:how do I reject Jesus as my king? I do things my own way. I say, no I don't wanna submit to the king of heaven, I want
Sean:a king like the nations, which is me. So I say,
Sean:no I'm not going to forgive, I'm going
Sean:to be bitter. I'm going to
Sean:get angry and curse with my tongue a brother or sister. I'm going to lust rather than turn my eyes from worthless things. I'm going to envy someone else's situation or skill rather than thanking God on their behalf. I will foster rivalry and division with my words and stir up
Sean:strife. I'll make it
Sean:a goal to outdo someone else rather than outdoing them
Sean:and showing honor. I'll be lazy rather than working heartily as unto the Lord. This is how we reject Christ. It's not by looking at the sky and saying, I don't believe you. It's by walking on the earth and doing actions that prove we don't want you as our king.
Sean:We cannot profess to know him and deny him by our works. Titus one seventeen, we cannot call him Lord, Lord and not do what he tells us. Luke six forty five. Now I've placed some emphasis here and maybe one
Sean:of your responses in your mind is, is sin really that serious? Since Jesus saved me from my sins, doesn't that mean sin kind
Sean:of doesn't matter for me anymore? The Bible has an answer for that. It's by no means. That's like saying since my parents taught me not to drink bleach is it okay if I drink bleach now it won't hurt me anymore? No.
Sean:The way that Jesus saves us from sins, the way he sanctifies us, the way he makes us look more like Christ, how this looks operationally is by telling us the right thing to do and then empowering us by his Holy Spirit to go
Sean:and do it. Here's an example of how Jesus saves from lust. I've got an example how Jesus saves from lust. Matthew five twenty nine. If your
Sean:right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that the whole body be thrown into hell. Hopefully we're all familiar enough with Jesus' use of figures of speech that we understand he's not talking about self harm here. He is talking about radical action cutting off avenues of sin in your life. My point here is this, how does Jesus save from lust?
Sean:He doesn't just make it disappear. He tells you what to do. And then here's what makes it even possible.
Sean:And then by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, he enables you to desire to obey and to be able to obey. It is God who works in us both to will and to work according to his good pleasure. Too often we over spiritualize this process. We think that Jesus saving us from sin means either sin doesn't really
Sean:matter anymore or that
Sean:sin just kind of goes away. We don't have to deal with it anymore. And that leads us to just kind of passively wait for this to happen.
Sean:No. Holy Spirit empowered obedience is the means that God uses to make us cease from sin, to take us away, to turn us away from our sins.
Sean:And that is how we affirm his Lordship in our life. But where does that leave us? When we do sin because we do. When we deny his Lordship with our actions then what happens? Well, that's that's just what Israel has done here.
Sean:So let's take a
Sean:look at the text and see how God responds to them. 14.
Sean:If you will fear the Lord and serve him and obey his voice and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, it will be well.
Sean:But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord
Sean:will be against you and your king. Now therefore stand still and see this great thing that the Lord will do before your eyes. Is it not wheat harvests today? I will call upon the Lord that he may send thunder and rain and you shall know and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in the sight of the Lord and asking for yourselves the king. So Samuel called upon the Lord and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel.
Sean:Now what amazes me about this passage is his graciousness towards Israel. Just think, they just said we don't want you. We don't want you as king anymore. We want a human king. They've rejected him.
Sean:But look at the grace of God as he says, I'm going to continue to work with you. I'll even continue to work with you through the king you chose if you will simply follow me. Not only is God gonna continue to bless them, he'll bless them through the king they just cheated on him with. Now for sure
Sean:there's still punishments in view in this passage for continued sin, but that's not the surprising part. That's nothing new. God's covenant with Old Testament Israel always had cursing for disobedience. What's surprising is that he's still giving them a second chance to serve and love and obey him. But we know this is who God is.
Sean:We shouldn't be surprised by this. They might have been. We shouldn't be. Because if you read through the whole scripture you get to
Sean:the climax of it all where Jesus shows us this is what God is like. Where Jesus dies on the cross for people who have rejected him. God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. And this is how, going back to us, God deals with arson as well. We're his chosen people.
Sean:We're Christians. He's not going to leave us. He's not going to forsake us. So how does he respond when we forsake him? With grace.
Sean:And what's grace? Well from a point of view grace is giving you more opportunity to obey rather than condemning you. So it's a second, third, fourth, one thousandth chance to turn towards him in obedience. You can never out sin God's grace. You never get so far that he says no more chances, you're done.
Sean:He always offers a path of obedience out of and away from the sin. This is God's response to being rejected by his people. It's not shunning. It's not punishing. It's an exhortation.
Sean:It's saying, You messed up. You messed up. Now let's keep going. We've considered then here the nature of sin. It's turning from God as King to ourselves as King like Israel just did.
Sean:We've seen God's response to sin. It's grace refusing to condemn us, but allowing us continued opportunity
Sean:to obey him and prove that he's our Lord.
Sean:Now let's see how Israel responds to God's chants here. How does Israel respond to God and what he's just called them to? 19, And all the people said to Samuel, Pray for your servant, that
Sean:the Lord your God, that
Sean:we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil to ask for ourselves a king. And Samuel said to the people, do not be afraid. You have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver for they are empty.
Sean:For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name's sake because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself. Moreover as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you and I will instruct you in the good and right way. Only fear the Lord and serve him faithfully
Sean:with all your heart. For consider what great things he has done for you. But if you still do wickedly you shall be swept away both you and your king.
Sean:So Israel responds rightly here. They admit to their mistake. They say, We should not have chosen this king, and we've added this to our whole resume of sin. Now we've added this to it that we've chosen a king. Of course, they can't take it back either.
Sean:You can't go back in time. There's no control Z for this. It's a new stage in their relationship with God. It's like having a child. You can't take it back, and it's going to affect the rest
Sean:of your entire life. But what does Samuel do? He just encourages them. Just obey the Lord. Even in the midst of
Sean:this new circumstance that they've brought themselves into, even in the midst of the consequences they're facing for the
Sean:sin, they can now turn to the Lord in obedience. And it is that simple. That's it. There's no special hoops to jump through. There's no complex mission of penance.
Sean:There's no one doing the decision or the consequences. It's just now go and obey. You're my people. I'm not forsaking you. I've chosen you.
Sean:Stop turning to empty things and turn back to me right now, right now where you are. I want you to know that is God's exact response to us. When we sin, this is how he responds to our sin. It's deceptively simple. It's like John eight, Go and sin no more.
Sean:That's it. That's how we deal with our sin. We recognize the evil we've done. We need to understand that our sin was sin. And then right there, right then, we fear the Lord with our whole heart and we obey.
Sean:We just start to live like he tells us to live.
Sean:This is how you respond to both small and large sins alike. A hurtful word said in anger, or if you're standing before the judge because a murder you've committed, an anger. Both small sins we bounce back from quickly, and large sins, the consequences of which we deal with our entire lives, God calls us to respond the same way. We simply start to obey what he's told us to do. Right now, this moment, you have a fresh chance to obey the Lord today.
Sean:I think sometimes we feel through shame that we need some space from God when we've sinned until the bad effects of sin kind of wear off, or maybe sometimes we feel hypocritical to start obeying God. It's like, well, how can I obey him right now here when I just disobeyed him over here? That makes me feel like a hypocrite. Or maybe we feel like there's some punishment, a cleansing kind of cathartic time of penance we need that makes up for the sin, and then we can go back to living as a Christian in God's good graces. That's a clever deceit.
Sean:It's a great deceit, so probably it's very evil because that sort of mentality is really gonna keep you
Sean:from ever repenting and it could very easily lead into an entire life that denies Jesus as Lord. That does not end well. We don't need that cleansing. We don't need that distance from God. Why?
Sean:Because Jesus became the curse that we would have had. Jesus became that. He was separated from God. He took the shame. He took the condemnation.
Sean:There's just none of that left for us anymore. And by the cleansing merit of Christ, we are completely cleansed from and delivered from that punishment such that now we may simply reapproach God cleansed by Jesus Christ and standing before him who we've just rejected, we can say, I was wrong. How do I obey from here? Not, how do I make it right? Jesus did that.
Sean:We can't make it right. That's works based salvation. We can't do that. We say, I was wrong. How do I obey from here?
Sean:An outburst of wrath.
Sean:I was wrong. How do I obey from here? Dishonest dealings, lying about someone or to someone. Okay, I was wrong.
Sean:How do I obey from here? Or maybe something huge, an illicit relationship.
Sean:I was wrong. How do I obey from here? It's the same from the least sins to the greatest sins God calls us to respond by turning towards him with our whole heart and saying, I was wrong. How now do I obey?
Sean:But in closing here, I
Sean:wanna just draw your attention to verse 25.
Sean:It says, If you still do wickedly,
Sean:you shall be swept away both you and your king. Now this is where our experience is completely different from Israel's. This option does not exist for us anymore. Of course this is because our king, our king did what no other king could do. He lived a perfect life.
Sean:He earned salvation and then dying for the ones who rejected him he lavished that righteousness he earned upon us and he absorbed the damnation we earned in himself and rising from the dead vindicated, we are risen with him, and there is just now no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Jesus is our high king and because he had to undergo that rejection and has raised up from it,
Sean:there's no more for us. There's no strike three, you're out. We can always and ever have the opportunity and ability to turn to God afresh out of the worst sin and just say, I'm here. How do I obey?
Sean:How do I walk with you now?
Sean:And so I want you to remember three things from this sermon in closing. First, that sin is serious. And if you think, yes, I
Sean:know it's serious. It's more serious than you think it is. Even if you think it's very serious. It's rejecting Jesus Christ as our King. It's destructive to your well-being.
Sean:It's destructive to those around you. And being saved from sin doesn't just look like sin not mattering anymore, and it doesn't just look like sin disappearing. It looks like a Holy Spirit enabled obedience to Jesus who is our king. And then when we do sin, when we do reject God with our actions, God's response is not judgment but the loving, genuine,
Sean:and immediate call back into fellowship with him. He doesn't condemn, but rather with a warm heart, with open hands, with infinitely more love than a father has even for his children, he invites us back into obedient fellowship with him. And then the last thing is no matter the sin, how large or permanent the circumstance, the consequences of that sin, no matter what it is, you're never unable to follow God afresh. Our response always and immediately and without any feelings of hypocrisy or rejection be to recognize the sin and then begin afresh to obey Jesus in whatever circumstance we find ourselves in. That's how
Sean:we affirm him as our king. He is
Sean:our king. Let us not go looking for another. Let me pray for us.
Sean:Lord Jesus, we thank you for your mercy that we always have a chance to obey. We always have a chance to serve you. We always always can turn to you and listen to your words and be your children. Thank you that you forgive from sin. Thank you that you've given us salvation.
Sean:Lord, thank you that you provide, by the Holy Spirit, the means that we might not walk in sin, but
Sean:we might have victory over that. Help us to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ Jesus. And Lord, help us to consider that and to know that and then to live and work from it and be people who live holy and upright lives, people who are zealous for good works, people who love one another and build one another up. Help us to do that, Lord. We rely on you for that.
Sean:We thank you for the ability to do that. We pray that it would be increasing in our lives and the lives of the children here as well for the glory of your name and and for the the flourishing and benefit of of our friends,
Sean:our families, ourselves, and for our communities. Pray that you would grant this to us by your mercy. In Jesus name, amen.
Caleb:Thank you for listening to this message from Kingstree Church in Sabina, Ohio. To see more of the beauty of God and the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, come worship with us on Sundays at 10AM or visit our website at kingstreechurch.org.