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Teaching podcast from the Eagle Community Church of Christ in Mont Belvieu, TX.
Hi, friends, and welcome back to the Eagle Community Church of Christ podcast. My name is John Gunter. You're tuning in this week again to, part of our series on the Holy Spirit. This is called empowerment part two. And in this sermon we're kind of diving into how God worked, through people.
John Gunter:Specifically, this week we're talking about, both Saul and Moses and, very different in both of these men. And so, I think that's we kind of see that in our own lives, right? We don't we don't experience the same gifts that other people experience and so, one of the questions is, you know, why is it different and the other question is, what are you doing with your kid? And that's what we're gonna leave you with today. Again, thanks for listening.
John Gunter:Hope you enjoy the sermon. Again, if you're if you haven't been here the last few weeks, we are talking about, what about the Holy Spirit? We're gonna we're gonna go through this study for a while, but last week we talked about remember, week we talked about how the holy spirit creates and sustains just like God the father. Remember Genesis one two where the spirit is hovering over the water just waiting for God to say the word, and the spirit brings about creation. We talked about as we sit here and we breathe and our hearts beat and our lungs take in oxygen, that is part of God's sustaining power.
John Gunter:As we walk into creation outside and we see all of the things happening and working together to provide us with all the things we have, That is God's sustaining power. Last week, we talked about how God empowered people. We talked about how Joseph was given this ability to interpret dreams. We talked about how Bezalel and Oholiab were given this creativity to be able to create, to be artistic, and we talked about how God empowers people to do that. And finally, last week, we ended with the story of Samson, how Samson was gifted with this this power.
John Gunter:Probably about as strong as I am, if I would guess. I haven't ripped any lions in half this week, but I'll I'll work on that. But Samson, as we saw last week, not only was given the power and used it positively, but he also sometimes said the the the power of the spirit of God came upon him and he did some things that weren't so good. And so we have to as we look at the whole picture of the holy spirit in scripture, we also have to contend with sometimes we don't use that power very well, do we? We don't use our gifts and abilities to the best of what God would have us do, and God still gives us the freedom of choice.
John Gunter:Right? God does not pour out his spirit on us, and then we walk around like robots doing exactly the right thing at the right time. God pours out his spirit on humanity, on imperfect people, and we have a choice of what to do. This week, we're doing empowering again because this is so good. I wanna talk about two people today.
John Gunter:I wanna talk about Saul and Moses. Saul begins this journey. We're gonna cover quite a bit of scripture. If you need these later, let me know. I'll I'll get those for you, or you can check the the livestream.
John Gunter:But we're gonna cover a lot of this. But Saul, of all, was anointed. He was anointed by God. Remember, they weren't even supposed to have kings. Right?
John Gunter:We ended last week with the judges where the the the spirit of God was poured out on the judges. Well, they decided we need a king like the rest of the world. And so, they began with Saul, and God went with it. God didn't destroy them. He didn't throw them away.
John Gunter:God went with the people still. Again, because God has shown us over and over, he is a God who wants a relationship with us. Not a God who's just easily angered and runs off all the time. Right? And so Saul is anointed by God here in Samuel ten one.
John Gunter:Then Samuel took a flask of olive oil and poured it on Saul's head and kissed him saying, has not the Lord anointed anointed you ruler over his inheritance? And so just a just a symbol there, just a that God is going with this. That God has accepted this at this time. But then we see this promise or this prediction to Saul, the spirit of the Lord will come powerfully on you, and you will prophesy with them, and you will be changed into a different person. And so, when we started this study, maybe you thought about the Holy Spirit, maybe you thought about either speaking in tongues or prophecy.
John Gunter:My wife reminded me this morning, not everybody thinks like that. I know a lot of you have a really healthy view of the Holy Spirit, but for me, for the longest time, if you said, what does the Holy Spirit do? That's where I would have gone. That's what I would have thought. But here, Saul become he comes into his kingship.
John Gunter:It says, the spirit of the Lord will come powerfully on you, and you're gonna see that you will prophesy. Something will be changed in you that you will be a different person. Now, one of the things that it seems that Saul did that that characterized this was he was probably in a trance. He probably didn't expect this and probably was just in a trance for a while, and it's kinda weird to think about. But that's the way God wanted to work in him, to show that that that God was there.
John Gunter:And so here is Saul actually prophesying. As Saul turned to leave Samuel, God changed Saul's heart, and all these signs were fulfilled that day. When he and his servants arrived at Gibeah, a procession of prophets met him. The spirit of God came powerfully upon him, and he joined in their prophesying. I don't know what you would do with that if you were going about your day and all of a sudden you were prophesying.
John Gunter:I have not experienced that. But what an amazing thing for a person to have experience. Right? As we go about and we think about our own lives, how we go about and think, man, am I am I right with God? Hopefully, we're thinking along those terms.
John Gunter:But I hope I'm I'm going about my day and doing the right kind of thing, and all of a sudden, the spirit of God is on you and you start to prophesy. Now the problem with Saul, as we know, because we have studied the story this past spring, is it Saul? Not all he does not always follow God, does he? And so we see kind of this this this weird thing where it says he has been anointed by God, he has given the spirit of God, but as Saul's heart turns away from God, what we get is something way different in Samuel 16. Now the spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord, or at least, as we try to translate that, at least allowed by the Lord to torment him.
John Gunter:So Saul go goes from being a man who's who is empowered by the Holy Spirit of God, When he decides he wants to walk away from God, God says, okay, well, you won't have my spirit with you. And all of a sudden, a a an evil spirit in this way starts to torment him. We see this again in Samuel 18. The next day an evil spirit from God came forcefully on Saul. He was prophesying in his house while David was playing the lyre as he usually did.
John Gunter:Saul had a spear in his hand and he hurled it saying to himself, I'll pin David to the wall. But David eluded him twice. You see how this spirit comes into Saul and all of a sudden he is changed. Because once the spirit of God leaves a person, there is a vacuum of sorts as they're not. If you decide I'm no longer gonna follow God, there is a place in your life for something else.
John Gunter:Right? And that's what Saul experiences here, that all of a sudden, these evil spirits are around, and he is changed. Sitting here, and all of a sudden he's throwing at David. As we've mentioned several times, the biggest thing we need to keep in mind when we're talking about all of this is that we need to test, we need to be able to discern, we need to be able to test the spirit. If you're around Saul at this time, at one moment, maybe you understand he is gifted by God.
John Gunter:The spirit of God is on him. But once you start chucking a spear at your buddy David, maybe we ought to ask, is that from God? And I want to give you the scripture for that this morning, that is John four one. Dear friends, do not believe every spirit. We're not supposed to be someone who's just carried around by the latest thing we have heard, but test the spirit to see whether they are from God because many false prophets, and we'll talk about this when we talk about prophecy, many false prophets have gone out into the world.
John Gunter:So one of the things we try to do in church a lot of times, we try to protect people. We try to keep everything as in like we do our kids sometimes, we shelter them so much that they're really not prepared to go out into the world and deal with things. Have you seen that before? And what do you get as soon as someone like that goes off to college? Rebellion, most of the time.
John Gunter:Right? And so what we do is is we we hedge people, we protect them, and we don't we don't allow them to grow and and go through all of these things and see how life really works, and all of a sudden, something changes and they're off. But test every spirit. Be able to discern, and discerning means that we have to to grow in the Lord. Jesus says in the sermon on the mount in Matthew seven, he says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven.
John Gunter:Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons, and in your name perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers. So sometimes the the hard part about discerning is looking at the life of Saul here. One moment you would say, he is blessed by God, he can prophesy, God is evident in his life.
John Gunter:And if you're not thinking I need to discern things, you might accept the rest of Saul's life as somehow being guided from God when he was walking away. And so, in everything that we do, we discern. So many churches have been manipulated and controlled by a pastor who has decided, I want control. And I want you guys to take care of of all my wants and wishes. I said last week that, you know, if I come up here and start preaching about how God told me I need a private airplane.
John Gunter:I mean, I'd be happy if you'll get me one, but what we need to do is go and see from the word of God, where does this make sense that God would want this? If I come in here and I'm preaching every week about how God just wants you to have a nice car, how God desires for you to have a nice house. Maybe he does for you, but why? Maybe we ought to ask what God really wants and read from his word. The next person we're gonna talk about is is the life of Moses.
John Gunter:Now, you read about Moses, not a lot is said about the spirit of God until kind of later on. Isaiah will say this in in Isaiah 63, then his people recall the days of old, the days of Moses, and his people where is and his people, where is he who brought them through the sea with the shepherd of his flock? Where is he who set his holy spirit among them? Who sent his glorious arm of power to be at Moses' right hand, who divided the waters before them to gain for himself everlasting renown? Who led them through the depths?
John Gunter:Like a horse in open country, they did not stumble. Like cattle that go down to the plain, they were given rest by the spirit of the Lord. This is how you're you guided your people to make for yourself a glorious name. One of the questions we had, at least in the initial class time, week, was what how did the Hebrew people understand the spirit of God? And the answer to that is really it progressed as time went on.
John Gunter:God did not reveal in Genesis that this is exactly how I'm gonna work all the time. And so in the beginning, they knew God worked and his spirit worked in creation. And as the as time went on, they started seeing this person is empowered by the spirit of God, and you see kind of the thought kind of morph as it goes to where Isaiah looks back on the life of Moses and says the spirit of God was all over that. That he was involved in all of those things. If we would have backed up one more scripture here, what we would have actually seen in in verse 10 is the p talking about the people here here, yet they rebelled and grieved his holy spirit.
John Gunter:So he turned and became their enemy, and he himself fought against them. Anybody wants to sign up for that this morning? The fact that we could grieve the Holy Spirit. We will talk about that more as we go along. One of the things we need to understand about the life of Moses is really how he lived his life, how he was able to lead from the position that he led.
John Gunter:We understand he was empowered by God, but how did he lead? Number one, he had power without pride. Now that seems to be less and less common nowadays, does it not? It seems pride cometh with power. Right?
John Gunter:We don't think much about how pride cometh before a fall, but pride cometh with power. But Moses seemed to lead in a way that he had power without pride. And actually, Numbers twelve three says, now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. The word there for humble can be translated in the way that we're thinking right now, that I am a a humble person, but most of the time what it means is I have been humbled. Someone else has humbled me.
John Gunter:I have really taken it. And you think about the life of of Moses and as he led the Israelite people, can you think about all the things he was put through? Moses, maybe when you think of his life, you think about striking the rock instead of speaking to it. But as we as we discussed that, as we went through the story, how many of us would have struck the rock too out of frustration? I am sick of these people.
John Gunter:Have you ever had your your kids not listen so much that you just you said something you didn't wanna say, you did something you didn't wanna do and regret it, and you even maybe even had to apologize to your kids? But this was Moses' life. This is the way that he lived and had to deal with all of these different things. People in the wilderness crying and griping, we want food, you have food. We want different food.
John Gunter:Sounds like a bunch of children, doesn't it? But this was the life of Moses, and he was able to do this because he was a humble person. He did not run off in pride to follow something else. Moses also had to share his burden. The Lord said to Moses, Numbers 11, bring me 70 of Israel's elders who are known to you as leaders and officials among the people.
John Gunter:Have them come to the tent of meeting that they may stand there with you. I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the power of the spirit that is on you and put it on them. See, Moses is gifted. He is blessed with the spirit of God. They will share the burden of the people with you so that you will not have to carry it alone.
John Gunter:And I would imagine Moses said, thank you, because of all that he had dealt with with his people. But God said, this is how it is going to happen. And what we see with Moses is he had power without pride because he had a dependence on God's spirit. That he was able to, and we will see this with Jesus as well, live a life knowing that I am not self sufficient, that there is no possible way that I can take care of all these people's needs. And I loved our class this morning because we talked about this exact thing, didn't we?
John Gunter:Because sometimes we have to either put ourselves or be put in a situation where we are so over our head that we have to say, God, you're gonna have to take this because I can't do it. And I would imagine as Moses left his tent every morning and looked out among those people, that's the exact thought he had. What we don't see with Moses is some kind of American alpha male, I've got the plan and we're gonna do it this way and I'll make all the decisions and and this is gonna happen. Right? What we see a lot of times with Moses is, and Moses laid on his face before the Lord.
John Gunter:That God, you're gonna have to get me through this because I don't have all the answers. One of the things, and maybe the most significant thing in my opinion that we see in the life of Moses, not only is he dependent on the Holy Spirit, but b here, he accepts God's spirit in others. It is one thing to feel like you're in control and you've me and God are good and we'll lead this thing. It's another thing to say, I need help. And I believe God has blessed you with those gifts, and you're going to be able to help us in all of this.
John Gunter:One the most difficult things that elderships have across the world is deciding that, okay, the deacons can handle this in every church. When I got here, that was one of the things that stuck out to me is because our elders were talking about it, we need to do the work of elders or shepherds and allow other people to allow our deacons to do the work of the church. Because so many times, once you get power or even perceived power, the last thing we wanna do is let go of it. The last thing we wanna do is look around and say, I believe you could do it just as well. But God's spirit is not just poured out on one person in a church.
John Gunter:God has blessed all of us with so many gifts. We need to be allowed to express that, and that's exactly what Moses did. Moses also had power without jealousy. I think that's one of the the big hurdles, the big stumbling blocks for allowing other people to grow. To see God's spirit working in others that, well, once I become the preacher, I don't want I need to protect my spot.
John Gunter:I don't need to let Jordan preach because he might become better than me, and that's not good for me. I'm here, he needs to stay in whatever perceived position I have in in my mind. And we do that in church. And once we get in whatever position, whether it's a a teacher, a song leader, I lead this ministry, that ministry, oftentimes what we can do if we don't have this humble spirit, if we don't have this dependence on the holy spirit, what we can do is create this vacuum where I have to make it where if I don't do this, nobody can do it. Or at least that has to be so in my mind.
John Gunter:It's kinda depressing to know that in any of our jobs, if if we were to pass away this week, we would be replaced very quickly, wouldn't we? And it wouldn't be very long before they would forget who I was. Right? But part of being a part of God's church, a part of the family of God, the body, is to express our gifts, to train our gifts, to see how the holy spirit is working in all of us, and allow each and every one of us to grow in whatever ways that we have been blessed. Moses had this power without jealousy, without fear of of losing his power or being replaced.
John Gunter:In Numbers 11 verses 24 through 28, we see this episode. So Moses went out and told the people what the Lord had said. He brought together 70 of their elders and had them stand around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke with him, and he took some of the power of the spirit that was on him and put it on the 70 elders. When the spirit rested on them, they prophesied but did not do it again.
John Gunter:However, two men whose names were Eldad and Medad had remained in the camp. They were listed among the elders but they did not go out of the tent. Yet the spirit also rested on them, and they prophesied in the camp. A young man ran to and told Moses, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. Joshua son of Nun, who had been Moses aid since youth spoke up and said, Moses my Lord, stop them.
John Gunter:This fear that all of a sudden the spirit of God has rested on these people. They are not worthy of this. Right? Joshua kinda shows a little little difference between the way he thinks and the way Moses thinks because Moses responds this way. But Moses replied, are you jealous for my sake?
John Gunter:Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit on them. Man, that is a healthy saying this morning. To look around in so many of our prayers, and and I admit that that mine are, I'm I'm praying so many times for very selfish things. What what I want or what I think I need, but how how important is it to look around the room and say, I hope the spirit of the Lord is poured out on you, and you live into that.
John Gunter:And as we we look at our church in this place, at this time, in Mont Belvieu, I just have to say, what what would happen in here if we prayed that for each other? Not only we prayed that for each other, we we hoped for it, we expected it, and we encourage the spirit of God in all of our members. That I see that gift in you. God has poured that gift into you by his spirit, and I want you to live into that. A bunch of spirit filled people going out into the world.
John Gunter:I don't think we could stop the growth that would come out of this. Because we depended on the spirit, we did so in humility without jealousy. And finally, what we see with Moses is he had power without ambition, and we see that in in Numbers 14 verse 10. But the whole assembly talked about stoning them. Then the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites.
John Gunter:The Lord said to Moses, how long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me in spite of all the signs I have performed among them? Now, I've got to think that that wasn't just a past thing for God. I've got to think that sometimes in 2023, God looks at us and says, all the things I've done. God is not happy, is he?
John Gunter:God says, I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them, but I will make you into a nation greater and stronger than they. And that's what he says to Moses. But Moses' reply in this moment is not, man, I will be a greater, stronger nation. But do you remember what God what Moses did? He plead with God.
John Gunter:He said, do you remember all the things that you have promised your people? How would this look on you, God, if you destroyed your people at this moment? That for Moses, this was a chance to kind of take power and to have his name be the greatest. No longer would people be saying, I'm a son of Abraham, but I'm a son of Moses. And Moses said, no thanks.
John Gunter:God, what I want is for you to love your people, to be with them, to to fulfill this covenant that you have made with them, because Moses didn't lead with the the ambition that we hope for our CEOs if our if we look at our stock portfolios. If I watch one more documentary on the pharmaceutical community where the leader of pharmaceutical company ABC says, we're just out to make sure our stockholders are happy, I will throw up. But we have created a system that breeds that kind of thinking, that the only thing that is important is for me to make money. The only thing that is important is for me to have power. The only thing is that is important is for me to have control so that I can guide this ship and direct this ship, and we all can become rich.
John Gunter:That's the American dream, isn't it? That you have the ability to do so many things, that you can turn your life around, that you can come from nothing and make millions, and guess what? You can lose your soul for What we learned from Moses is that dependence on the Holy Spirit means I need to step out of the way. I need to step back and let God do what God's gonna do, and let's pray for that in all of us. And we can pray for that in our in our people, in our church, and then as I lay down tonight, that I pray that God would use me in ways maybe I'm not even comfortable with.
John Gunter:Because so many times, we have been gifted with something that we don't think measures up, or we don't think is that important, but God has blessed us in a way that if we would just live into that, man, we would take off. We've lived without it so much, we've protected ourselves, we've tried to hide from it so much that I think sometimes we don't even see the value in it anymore. What it's gonna take is a leap of faith, a stepping out, a decision point, a decision moment where it says, I am going to be used by God. God, would you pour your spirit out on me because I can't do it alone. And over and over in scripture, what we see is he will.
John Gunter:But you have to be an open vessel. You have to be a willing participant because God's not gonna make you do it. But if this morning, you will just pray that prayer and say, God, will you use me? I promise you he will. And as we offer a time of invitation, that is our prayer this morning, that we will be open to the spirit of God.
John Gunter:But as we see the way God works both in creation and the way that he empowers people, that we are people saying, here I am, Lord, send me. Instead of looking around and saying, you would be better for the job. I'm glad they're going and not me. We wanna offer that time of invitation. Love to pray with you about this.
John Gunter:We'd love to encourage you. But as I tell you often, you don't have to come and talk to me if you don't want to. What I'd love to see happen is you grab someone who loves and cares for you and will walk beside you each and every day and will hold you accountable and tell them, I wanna follow God today. If haven't been baptized, we'd love to see you start that walk with him. But if you have any needs, would you come as we stand inside?