The Speech That (Would Have) Broken the Internet

So, we're in 1 Samuel chapter 12.

Hopefully, you've turned to that portion of your Bibles.

In 1 Samuel chapter 3 verse 19, we are told that not one of Samuel's words fell to the ground.

And we've often mentioned that it's quite an amazing truth.

He had a connection with truth such that his words were worth listening to.

And so, for a bit of fun with a bit of click bait, I said, this is called the speech that would have broken the internet.

Because this is a man that we don't hear a lot bad about, right?

Samuel is a real pointer in the Old Testament to the Lord Jesus, a Messiah figure, if you will.

He was a leader and a prophet, and even a military leader at the beginning.

So, his farewell speech is significant, and we're going to sit in it for a bit this morning.

And we begin a new series.

Cory mentioned it.

We did six weeks in first Samuel, second Samuel, first Kings, second Kings last year.

We called it Kings & Characters.

And this year, we're doing another six weeks, Lord willing.

Last year, we looked at Samuel, the Philistines, the Ark of the Covenant, Saul, David and Josiah.

And this time around, we're going to look at different characters from a different angle.

Starting with Samuel's farewell speech.

I think there are three points that we could abbreviate and summarise that come from this great speech.

Number one, choose your king wisely.

Number two, remember about forgetting.

And number three, access grace daily.

If you noticed, as Jess read out for us, there's an importance that Samuel puts on the narrative story.

Did you notice that?

In this speech, he dies in chapter 25, so we hear a lot more about Samuel, but this is farewell speech.

And in his farewell speech, he reminds the people of their narrative, of their story.

And that's a very important thing for us to remember.

I want to do that.

I want to spend a couple of minutes and give the background story of where we land in 1 Samuel chapter 12.

So, the people of Israel have a relationship with the God who created them.

It started really from Abram and Sarah.

And that was the story told in Genesis chapter 11, where God said to them, I want to have a relationship of promise and commitment with you.

I will be your God and you will be my people.

But you're going to need to obey me for you to be blessed.

Now, the interesting thing if you read through the Old Testament is, so often the people of Israel did not obey.

And yet God did what?

He blessed them.

His heart is to bless and to bless in abundance.

The story of Genesis sees from the barren womb of Sarah, a people born and these people throughout that is functional 50 chapters of Genesis.

They end up being about 2 million people in size and they're in Egypt and they're in slavery.

And then God calls Moses to be his mouthpiece and after a tussle with Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, God rescues his people.

And this is a huge part of the big story of Israel.

God is the God who rescues his people.

And he brought his people through the Red Sea and he taught them at the base of Mount sinai, the Ten Commandments, about how to live as his people.

And initially, the people are reluctant to enter the promised land.

I hope you, if you know the Bible, you're putting together the story.

They are reluctant to go into the promised land.

There are giants in the promised land.

And so, God puts them on a 40 year detour.

Finally, after receiving three sermons from Moses and the Book of Deuteronomy, they enter the promised land.

The Book of Joshua records the fight for the land, an issue which is literally still going on.

The fight for the land of Israel.

After settling in the land of Israel throughout the Book of Joshua, we come to the Book of Judges, where Israel really forgot what they were meant to be and what they were meant to do in following the Lord.

And they basically look like a pagan nation in the Book of Judges.

And then that leads us to 1 Samuel, the beginning of the story of the kings of Israel.

Now, some of us have bought a book, Kings & Characters, and it's a devotional series working through approximately 500 years of history.

1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings.

And there's another book that we've had out for a little while too, which just is a Bible reading plan called 4100, and it takes you through the same content.

I've written those books as helps to understand.

Now, this is where the devotion, Kings & Characters, comes from.

My Bible, and commentaries, and listening to the Lord, and studying.

And so, if you, I know you can't really read that, but this is for the sake of putting it in context.

Hannah prays for her son on this screen, and this part of 1 Samuel.

And miraculously, she's given Samuel, and she gives Samuel back to serve the Lord in the priesthood.

In the next slide, we would read, if it was big enough, the house of Eli the priest is wicked.

Yet Samuel grows up as a righteous man, and he hears the call of God on his life, and he steps into that calling to be a prophet.

Next slide, we learn about the Philistines, and there are 3 chapters called the Ark Narratives.

And it's all about the presence of God in the Ark of the Covenant, which is very much forgotten at this stage, the power of the presence of God in the Ark.

And you might remember the Philistines captured the Ark, and they put the Ark in front of a stone god called the god Dagon.

And what happens overnight, the temple, the god falls on his face before the presence of Yahweh, represented by the Ark.

And then chapter 8 is a sad chapter where Israel asks Samuel, who's their leader, for a king.

And this is not good.

Why?

Because Israel has a king.

They are in a theocracy.

They don't need a human king.

They've got a divine king.

And what do they say?

They say, give us a king so that we can be like everyone else.

Give us a king because we don't want to be a set-apart people.

We do not want to be the people of the one true living Creator God.

We want to be just like the other nations.

In the next slide, the story of Israel's first king, Saul.

He happens to be tall, handsome, and humble at the start, chosen by God to be anointed as their first human king.

And interestingly, if you read down here at the bottom, where my red circles are, it's fascinating to hear the language of the New Testament.

It says, the Spirit of God came upon Saul, and the Lord changed his heart.

Very New Testament language.

It's sort of looking good at this stage.

And the next slide, Samuel anoints King, and Saul has won military victory.

And then that leads us to the next slide, which is Chapter 12, which we've just heard.

Can I commend to you, read your Bible?

Because if you don't read your Bible, it just won't make as much sense as it could.

We need to know the sword of the Word of God in our own scabbard so that we can pull it out and use it.

Amen?

We often talk about reading the Bible here at NorthernLife.

Can I just encourage you?

We come in and out of passion for the Word of God.

That's normal.

So if you're at a lower ebb, pull out your Bible and start reading again, and you will find you are blessed.

And even in the Old Testament, where it can be a little bit hard to understand things, it will point you to Christ and His glory found ultimately in the Gospel.

So idea number one, choose your king wisely.

Samuel said, verse one, to all Israel, I've listened to everything you've said to me, and I've set a king over you.

Now you have a king as your leader.

As for me, I'm old and gray.

My sons are here with you.

I've been your leader from my youth until this day.

Here I stand.

And then I want to come down to verse 12.

You said to me, now we want a king to rule over us, even though the Lord your God was king.

Now, here is the king you have chosen, the one you asked for.

See, the Lord has set a king over you.

If you fear the Lord and serve and obey him, and do not rebel against his commands, and if both you and the king who reigns over you follow the Lord your God, good.

But if you do not obey the Lord, and if you rebel against his commands, his hand will be against you as it was against your ancestors.

Choose your king wisely.

We don't have a king probably that we feel is over us.

We do sort of technically, legally.

King Charles is our king, but I don't think we probably feel that we are subjects to him as a power over us.

certainly like in these old days where a king would wield that power.

But I would suggest that we are subject to powers.

You and I have kings over our lives, and sometimes we're just not aware who and what they are.

But I hope we can get to that in a moment.

It was a dark day in 1 Samuel 8.4.

When you're reading your Bible through and you come to 1 Samuel chapter 8, it's dark.

Turn the lights down and just feel the sense of it's somber.

So all the elders of Israel, I'm reading from verse 4, gathered together and came to Samuel at Rama.

They said to him, you are old and your sons do not follow your ways.

There's now a point, a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.

Has anyone, put your hand up please, if you have read the story of the kings of Israel.

It all started here.

Can you imagine, like, it's a bit like the garden, isn't it?

Eating the beginning of sin.

The carnage, the collateral evil damage, the children that were sacrificed by evil kings, it all began here.

We wanna be like everyone else.

Samuel, again, filled with the Spirit of God, immediately prophesied what this king would do to the people.

It's fascinating, in chapter eight, he said, This is what the king you've asked for, who will reign over you, will claim as his rights.

Prophetically, he says, He'll take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses.

They'll run in front of his chariots.

Some he'll assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plough his ground and reap his harvest, and sell others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.

It's all about this king.

He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.

He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants.

He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants.

Your male and female servants and the best of your donkeys and cattle he will take for his own use.

He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves.

When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.

But the people refuse to listen to Samuel, whose words never fell to the ground.

We often don't get it right who to listen to.

Isn't that correct?

Where we find wisdom.

They said, no, we want a king over us.

We're not listening to your prophecy.

Then we will be like all the other nations because this is so deeply ingrained in them and often us.

If only we could be like everyone else.

But the people refused to listen.

We want a king, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.

So the people didn't realize that they were signing up for enslavement.

They were signing up to, in abandoning God's kingship, His Lordship, they were entrusting their lives to a Lord who was not holy, nor good, nor humble, nor faithful, nor all-powerful.

What's the connection with us?

NorthernLife, choose your king wisely.

Choose your king wisely.

I would suggest, I'm interested in a discussion after the service, for anyone who would like to talk.

I think the kings of our lives are the narratives we sit under.

What do you reckon?

Because ideas, there's no question, ideas are the most important and most powerful things in all the world.

The idea that you will sit under the narrative that you believe is true will drive how you make your decisions in life.

We live under the power of story.

We live under the meta-narrative that we choose to believe is meta, is the big one.

Story is so important.

We've often talked about the danger and power of that which becomes addictive.

The obvious things are things like gambling, alcohol.

These days, what we might say, binge streaming could become addictive.

Lustful desire certainly can.

Anything with screen time or gaming.

I might be talking about things that feel like they're about young people, but I think it's actually anything that distracts us and takes away the pain.

We're probably getting good at accessing these things as older people as well.

They control us like an evil king.

Choose your king wisely.

Have you ever made a big purchase in life and found out later it became your overlord?

It's hard, isn't it?

In days gone by, we might talk about, don't take out too big a mortgage to buy something that's beyond your means.

That could be a mistake.

And it will become an overlord that will steal from you the goodness of life.

What's so hard now is if you're a person trying to put a roof over your head and own that in Sydney, it's very hard to not put yourself in a position where that mortgage becomes an overlord, right?

It's just hard.

It's so easy if you own your house to sort of say, hey, you should be careful how much you extend yourself.

And I know people are like, oh, what else do we do?

But with those stresses come the overlord that says, you have to work a certain amount, and you will have this much time with your health, your God, your spouse, your friends, your family.

I would just say, hey, it's a good thing to press pause on the rapid speed of life and say, is our king the right king?

Amen?

It's scary.

Think about it.

The algorithm of your news and video feed, that is creating the story we live under.

If you don't have much screen time, more power to you.

The algorithm doesn't have your heart, doesn't have your mind.

But if you are spending a little bit of time on the phone and on this or whatever screen, those social media algorithms are actually guiding what our story that we're living under is.

And it'll help define for us what makes us angry.

Would you agree?

What controls us, what we may become impatient about, what we become envious about, what we spend and save for.

Choose your king wisely.

For some of us, it's got nothing to do with that.

It's just that we were hurt and harmed in our lives, and we chose to let those hurts stay with us.

And it created what the Bible calls a bitter root.

And that bitter root has control over our tongue.

We spew out stuff that we don't want to say, but it's sort of nasty.

And we get affected in our personalities, our lives, our relationships, because of the king that we have chosen.

Of course, the Lord Jesus is our overlord, amen?

He's the good king, king of kings, lord of lords.

He's the preferable one for us to live under, if we want to thrive in the kingdom.

But I think Samuel's onto something.

Choose your king wisely.

Secondly, I think, he says, remember about forgetting.

Verse 9, he says, they, the people of Israel, they forgot the Lord, their god.

So he sold them into the hand of Sisera, the commander of the army of Hazor, and into the hands of the Philistines and the king of Moab who fought against them.

They cried out to the Lord and said, we have sinned, we have forsaken the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtoreths.

But now deliver us from the hand of our enemies and we will serve you.

The people of Israel forgot.

That's what they did frequently.

They forgot, not only did they forget, Moses says, you forsook, and that means to abandon.

You forgot and you forsook.

This is not a new problem for Israel.

This is an old problem.

One of the more yucky portions of scripture is Exodus 32.

Do you remember?

God has led them out of Egypt through the Red Sea.

I mean, it's a dynamic rescue.

There's an angel, angel of death, that comes.

It's just so dynamic.

It's so real.

It's so evident.

The people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, Come, make us gods who will go before us.

As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what's happened to him.

Aaron answered them, Take off your gold earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.

So, all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.

He took what they handed him, made it into an idol, and cast it into the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool.

Then they said, These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.

Makes you sort of have a little vomit in the mouth, doesn't it?

Like it's...

What?

Who is the god?

A thing that people have made, remember about forgetting.

Remember what about forgetting?

Oh, just that it happens quickly.

Amen?

It just happens quickly.

I truly believe for me, as a Christian over many years, as I reflect on one of the more important aspects of Christianity, I would say memory.

Working on not forgetting.

And I'm not just saying scripture memorisation, that's a great thing.

And I'm not talking about remembering fancy theological terms.

I'm sort of into that myself.

Not really, just remembering who god is, what he has done, who that means I am, and what my role is on the planet.

Who is god?

What has he done?

Who today from your yesterdays, who today do you know god to be, such that you can walk into tomorrow with faith that he is unchanging and faithful?

Remember.

What did god do in your past that you need to remember today to ease your anxiety about tomorrow?

We've mentioned this before, but you know there is a way to time travel, isn't there?

Often we think there's no such thing as time travel.

There is.

Time travel is a thing.

It's called journaling, isn't it?

It's called journaling.

You write down today what the future you needs to hear in ten years, in five years, in two years.

You write it down and go, this is who my God is.

This is what He did for me, for you, future me.

This is real in time and space.

God acted by His grace in answer to our prayer.

I want you to know I'm coming in a time machine called a journal, and I want you to listen to me.

Your God, future me, is real.

But there may be a time in our life, me and my future me, that you will get so low that you won't be able to remember, that you will have forgotten and you will have ingrained new habits, just like the people of Israel.

Can I commend to you, journaling?

It's a blessing.

Remember about forgetting.

We are chronic forgetters.

Would you agree?

We forget how good God is, and we forget how bad the evil one is.

We forget how trustworthy, like just trustworthy, the Word of God is, the Word of the Spirit, prompting us how trustworthy and good He is, and how jolly, deceptive, and evil the evil one is, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

We forget.

Remember about forgetting.

And just a side note, it's good to remember that humans are designed to remember things automatically.

We need to ingrain them in our bodies.

That's why we talk about spiritual disciplines.

Do things over and over again, and they become automated.

So memory isn't just, oh, have I got a good memory or a bad memory?

Memory is, I'm going to train, not just try.

I'm going to train to be godly.

I'm going to learn this neural connection between my brain, which is being renewed in my body, and even the nerve connections are going to learn to act in certain ways that demonstrate good memory.

It's very practical to live out the righteousness we're called, to live in Christ by grace.

And finally, access grace daily to do this.

Don't be afraid, Samuel replied, you've done all this evil, yet do not turn away from the Lord.

Isn't that a wonderful piece of grace right there?

You've done so much objective evil, but serve the Lord with all your heart.

Don't turn away after useless idols.

They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you because they are useless.

For the sake of His great name, the Lord will reject His people because the Lord was pleased to make you His own.

Will not reject His people.

Will not reject His people because the Lord was pleased to make you His own.

As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you, and I will teach you the way that is good and right.

But be sure to fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart.

Consider what great things He has done for you.

Even back in the Old Testament, which often feels not so much grace oriented.

There's so much pain.

There's so much suffering.

There's so much judgment.

But it was.

It was all about grace.

And Samuel, in this speech that would have broken the internet, says to his people, I know that you are objectively evil.

You have been unfaithful.

Yet for the sake of his great name, the Lord will not reject his people because the Lord was pleased to make you his own.

Isn't that wonderful, that truth?

God's heart is grace.

He is slow to anger.

He doesn't want to reject his people.

He wants to save and restore and cause his people to flourish.

He wants his people to have their heart inclined towards him.

So can I encourage you, I don't know where you've come from today, maybe you're a regular, maybe you're online, maybe you're in the future, but there's nothing that you or I have done that disqualifies us from the grace of God.

Amen.

That's the truth.

It was wonderful to be praying for Cedric in the prison ministry, and you know, there's some prisoners who have a pretty real sense of failure.

But we need as much grace as the prisoner does.

Of course we do.

We've all failed.

We fall short of the glory of God.

If you know that you need God's grace, can I encourage you to turn to Him and confess your sin?

And He will be gracious and forgive you of your sin through Jesus, what Christ has done on the cross.

I've always loved our focus verse for the month.

We didn't do it today, but we will next week.

Lord willing, Titus 2.11, because it reminds us that grace is effective.

Often we think of grace as what happens at the bottom of the cliff after we fall into sin.

But grace is at the top of the cliff as well.

The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all people.

It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and to worldly passions, to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives.

It's for how many of us?

All people.

It's for all people the grace of God.

And it teaches us, because grace is a teacher.

Grace is God's fuel to do the slow work of transformation.

Grace.

We need God's grace, not just when we become a Christian, but every day of our lives in trying our best to follow Jesus with our whole heart.

We learn from grace, our teacher, to say, no, we learn how to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives, where, when?

In heaven?

In the new creation after we die?

I know the Bible says, in this present age, isn't that good?

In this present age is where the grace of God teaches us to say, no.

While we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Grace was available back there with Samuel.

It's available when Paul was writing to Titus in the first century.

And clearly, obviously, grace is available today.

Hallelujah.

Grace is available today.

There's enough grace for you.

Can I just repeat that again?

There's enough grace for you.

You're not worse.

And no one is good enough to not need His grace.

Grace daily.

Christ who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for Himself for people that are His very own, and eager to do what is good.

What do you pick up from that passage about Samuel's situation?

God always wanted a people that are His very own, that are happy to not be like everyone else.

Amen?

In the Old Testament, we want to be like everyone else.

And God's like, no, no, I want you to be my people so that through you, you will show what true humanity looks like.

That will be magnetic for others to be drawn towards your community of light.

And it's all about grace, revealed in Christ, in us, and His love shining through us.

A people that are His very own, eager to do what is good with Christ as King.

We need grace daily.

This is an important speech.

I think in the history of words, it's got to be one of the more important speeches, because not one of Samuel's words fell to the ground.

He suggests, choose your King wisely.

Remember about forgetting.

Access grace daily.

‍