Reviving the Heart: Lessons from 1st Samuel 7

Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church podcast, where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.

My name is Pastor Josh, and I want to thank you for listening to this podcast.

I hope that this podcast can be a blessing to you and strengthen you in the word of God.

Now, come along.

Let's look into the Bible and see what God has for us here today.

All right, well, we're going to continue on in our study in 1st Samuel, so if you have your Bibles, turn with me.

First Samuel, chapter number seven.

First Samuel seven.

If you weren't here last week, I'll try to catch you up with where we are.

Basically, what happened was the Philistines had taken the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelites in battle, and the Philistines had put the Ark of the Covenant in the house of Dagon, their false God.

And God showed himself strong and sovereign over Dagon and defeated him by knocking the idol over and ultimately striking, striking the Philistines with tumors and sickness and all that kind of stuff.

And so they were getting rid of the ark, and if you remember, they put the Ark on a cart and they sent it to Beshemesh.

And they put two milking cows in front of the cart and said, well, let's see if God really is in control.

And the God of Israel led the cart all the way to a new place where we left off at their Kira Jarem.

And that's where we're picking up the story.

So the Ark is there, but if you remember, while the ark was.

Well, actually it was in Beshemesh.

And then the guys looked into the ark, if you remember that, they looked into the ark, they didn't obey God.

God struck them down.

And the people in Kira at Jarem, didn't they?

They came and they picked up the ark because the people there in Bet Shemesh didn't want it anymore.

They didn't want to come to a place of repentance.

They wanted to just get rid of the Ark and the presence of God.

So where we pick it up in chapter seven, First Samuel seven, there's going to be the men from Kirat Jarem.

They come and they fetch the ark and they bring it back to their town.

And that's where the story is going to pick up here.

So verse one, it says, in the men of Kirat Jarem came and fetched up the ark of the Lord and brought it to the house of Abinadab in the hill and sanctified Eliezer his son, to keep the ark of The Lord.

And it came to pass while the ark of Bone and Kirath Jarem, that the time was long, for it was 20 years.

And all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord.

So, so what happens here?

Well, essentially we see that these men take the ark to the house of Abinadab.

They don't take it to the tabernacle, which is where they should have taken it.

They.

They put it here in the house of Abinadab.

And then so instead of resting in the house of God, it was resting in the house of Abinadab.

And then they consecrate Eliezer as essentially this.

This new priest to watch over the ark of the Lord.

And we don't know much about Eleazar's past.

We don't know if he has a proper priestly lineage.

We know that they didn't Follow the Exodus 29 model of setting up a priest.

And so even in the midst of all this, there is disobedience with the Israelites.

And we see that the result of that disobedience is at the end of verse two, it says, all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord.

So Israel had the ark back.

And we would think that that's the big victory.

But even so, they have what they consider to be the presence of God in their midst.

But still ISRA finds themselves not enjoy, not in victory, but still in sadness, still in ruin.

And they.

They had a good reason to be in this place because essentially at this point in time, their cities were still in ruins, their armies were defeated, and it looked like the Philistines were still more powerful than them, and obviously in their minds, more powerful than God.

Because remember, if you go back a few chapters, the.

The people's heart was basically saying that, hey, all the glory has left Israel.

So they find themselves just in a really bad place.

What we would consider today to be what many people call a spiritual rut.

It looks like there's not victory.

It looks like God's not winning.

And many times what happens is that we as the people of God live in rebellion.

We live in our own way.

We live worshiping God the way that we want to worship him and not the way that he tells us to worship Him.

And we don't find joy, we don't find peace, we don't find satisfaction.

And then we blame God for that.

And so what we're seeing here is that Israel is basically setting themselves up to find spiritual despair, spiritual hopelessness.

Now, why do they find themselves in that place?

Again?

We See that they're not obeying God and they are kind of wallowing in this lament, they're wallowing in this hopelessness, they're wallowing in despair.

And so we see verse three, Samuel comes and he preaches the truth, he preaches repentance.

And we really see in verse number three the remedy to this spiritual hopelessness.

We see the remedy to how we as people can find satisfaction in the Lord.

We can find joy in the Lord, and ultimately we can find purpose and we can find future and we can find forgiveness.

And so how was that done?

It's done through the preaching of the word of God.

Verse 3.

And Samuel Spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, if you do not return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Asheroth from among you and prepare your hearts unto the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.

So right here Samuel gives the people of Israel the direction on how to find salvation, how to find revival, how to find new hope.

And he breaks it down there very clearly.

And I think it's important for us to see here in verse number three the path in which they could find this type of revival, this type of renewal.

So God raised up Samuel to do something very important and that is to be a prophet.

And we also see in this passage that he's called to be a judge.

Now if you remember what the biblical judges would do, they would come and they would basically call out the sin of the people.

They would essentially tell the people that, hey, this is where you're wrong and this is where you need to go.

And it wasn't in their own wisdom, it wasn't in their own strength.

They were speaking as prophets of God.

Remember what a prophet is?

A prophet is someone who speaks forth the truth of God.

So what Samuel essentially does is he comes to the people of Israel and he speaks forth the truth of God to them.

And he says a few things here.

He says, number one, here, if you do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, and so he calls them to return back to God, but not just on an outward level, not just in a half hearted way.

He says to come back to God with everything, to rededicate their lives, their, their hearts to the Lord.

And so he says for them to come to a place of repentance.

And we need to talk about that term, repentance, because you're going to hear a lot of that talked about here this evening.

And I think we do need to know where repentance means.

Repentance essentially means to turn away from something to.

To.

It's like a military term to.

To about face.

And really, with repentance, it's turning away from something and turning to something, turning away from one direction and turning in another direction.

And so what Samuel is essentially telling these people is this.

You need to turn away from some things, and he lists those things here.

And you need to turn to God.

And he says to do it with all of your hearts.

And so he says this needs to start with an inward change.

You know, a lot of times we would think about the outward changes that need to happen, right?

You need to get rid of the idols.

You need to get rid of the sin.

You need to get rid of the compromising values that you have with these other people that you have allowed to come into your camp.

But no, he starts with the inward change.

And that's where, really, where it always starts.

It's always a heart change.

God definitely wants to see our actions change, right?

When God calls us to a place of obedience to him, he wants our actions to be aligned with his word.

He wants us to be where we need to be.

He wants us to be saying the things that we need to say.

He wants us to be following him in every way that he has called us to follow Him.

But a lot of times what happens is we try to do the outward things that show that without having a true inward change.

And so Samuel addresses the heart here.

And so the inward was more important than the outward.

The inward change had to come before the outward changes could come.

And so instead of just saying, hey, tear down the idols, which he does say that they need to do, and.

And to get rid of that, he.

He says to start with, come back to love God with all your hearts.

You go back to the book of Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy tells us that it's the thing that they call the Shema, which is, love the Lord thy God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And to love your neighbor as yourself, to love God with everything.

It's restated in the New Testament.

Remember, Jesus is asked, what's the greatest commandment?

And Jesus could have listed all the different commandments that they had there.

But what does he say?

He says, to love God with everything, to love my neighbor as myself.

And so it starts with a love for God.

And so I think that's really where it is in America today that, you know, we.

We look in our context and we say, you know, Sometimes, maybe we pray for revival or.

Or we pray for repentance, we pray for change.

We pray for churches to stand up for the cause of the truth of the gospel.

But oftentimes we aren't thinking about what that really means.

We.

We don't really know where that starts.

It starts with individuals having inward change that eventually will manifest itself to corporate change and external changes.

So what happens sometimes, and what I've seen in my own life, and maybe you've seen this as well, is we pray for revival, and we look for it to happen with other people.

Like, okay, Lord, bring revival.

Now, where is everyone else going to change?

How was that church over across town going to change instead?

Biblically speaking, what Samuel does is he goes to the individuals and he says, look, Israel, where are you going to change?

If you want to see revival happen in our nation, if you want to see change happen, it starts with you.

And so he has this direction of the inward change that eventually will manifest itself to an outward change.

And so the inward was more important than the outward in the start.

And that's why Samuel first calls Israel to return with all of their hearts, and then he tells them to put away the foreign gods.

So I want to kind of throw some words out at you here this evening, and I want you to think about them in a way that we can tangibly apply to our lives.

And so the first word I want you to think about is revival.

What does revival mean?

It means to have new life, to have new energy, to have new direction, to.

To be able to serve God with joy, with passion, with zeal.

And so to have revival, which we all would admit that there's a great need of revival in our church, in our world, we.

We have to.

To have revival, there must be repentance, because in revival comes a change of heart, right?

And.

And to have that change of heart, we have to recognize that we're going in the wrong direction.

And then we have to recognize which direction we need to go.

So for revival, we must have repentance.

And to have repentance, we must have a recognition of what sin is.

What, what, what.

What does it mean for me?

And how am I falling into that when it comes to my own life?

And so he says there, return unto the Lord, revive your hearts.

That starts with repentance.

That starts with recognition, which brings renewal.

And so he says, turn to God with all your hearts.

And so this is a dedication.

He's not asking for someone to be a lukewarm follower of God.

He's asking for someone to come and give everything to the Lord.

You know, a lot of times we, we think about it from a Western perspective, you know, and if I'm committed to my job, I go to my job Monday through Friday, 9 to 5.

That's commitment.

If you do that for 50 years, people will say, man, that was the most committed worker I ever had in my, my workplace.

They were, they never took a day off.

But the reality is, is God's not just asking for nine to five.

He's not just asking for Monday through Friday.

God wants everything.

He wants our hearts.

Romans, chapter 12.

If, if you know that passage, we're going to get there in our study on Sunday mornings.

But he says that he wants us to give our.

Our whole bodies, everything.

A living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is our reasonable service.

And so we really think about what God has done for us, and it's only reasonable that we would give him everything.

And that's what Samuel is preaching here.

He's preaching for this inward repentance that leads to revival, which leads to dedication to God.

And this change isn't seen like, I can't see your heart.

None of us can see each other's hearts.

And so a lot of times we're, we're looking to gauge revival off of the outward action, which that's natural.

But the inward change is something that only God understands and that God knows and that we know.

And so the inward change is proved by the outward.

So he says, start there, but then don't just say to everyone, hey, my heart is committed to God.

If, if in.

What he says here is, if your heart is committed to God, this is what it's going to look like.

We see that in the book of James.

What does it, what does it mean for someone just to say, well, I've got faith, but nothing changes.

The reality is, is that it's.

It's not that our works save us, but what the Bible says is that when we are in true faith, it will manifest fruit.

It will manifest works not perfectly in every setting, but what we will see is that there will be that change of heart.

And so Samuel says, okay, follow God with all of your hearts, then put away the strange gods.

And so he says, get rid of these foreign gods.

Get rid of these pagan rituals.

Get rid of this sin that has engulfed your camp.

And so he says, return with all of your hearts.

And this is what it will look like this, this change, rejecting the other ways, rejecting the other religions, rejecting these sinful actions.

And so he says, get Rid of that.

And he lists this two.

Two gods.

Eventually he's going to list two.

He lists only one here.

Ashtaroth is one.

He says, get rid of the strange gods.

And specifically Ashtaroth, which.

Ashtaroth was a goddess of fertility, a goddess of pleasure, of sensuality.

And so, you know, there's a picture here that he says, get rid of the worship of this, this, this goddess of sexuality is essentially what he's saying.

So obviously this type of.

Of worship had permeated the Israelite camp.

Essentially what we see is they've allowed sensuality, they've allowed fleshly living to come into the camp.

So he says, get rid of that.

That's not what you should be doing.

You should not be living in a way that is the same as these pagan cultures.

And that's a call for all of us, right?

We, we say that we are the church.

We should.

But at the same time, we should look different than the world.

He says, look different.

Don't be like the other cultures that have these strange gods that has Ashtaroth, who eventually we're going to see has Balaam or baal.

He says, don't be like them, don't look like them.

Don't join in with what they're doing.

So what's the practical application for us in that is, yes, we're the church, we should look different.

We should not look the same as the world.

We should not celebrate the same things as the world.

We should not partake in the same things of the world.

Now, there is a reality that we see throughout the Bible and particularly in the New Testament that says that, yes, we're going to be in the world.

You can't avoid the things that are around us.

But one of the things that we can take note of is that we can be in the world, but not of the world, not, not defined by the world.

And so I'm going to speak very freely here this evening, but what I'm going to say is that there's too many Christians that say, you know what?

I can be just like my unsaved neighbor, but that's okay.

And the truth is that we should be different.

We shouldn't be entertaining the same things as the unsaved.

That should not be something that we take into our life.

And essentially what he says here is, he says, stop worshiping these gods.

Now, most of us wouldn't admit or even understand that we've worshiped a false God.

We would say, no, no, no, we.

I only worship one God.

But think about what Worship really is.

Worship is just giving value to something.

Worship is, is dedicating ourselves to something.

Isn't it obvious that sometimes in our culture today, even Christians could value something higher than their relationship with God.

Maybe they would, they would put something on a higher pedestal than what the word of God tells us to do within worship.

And so we often don't think about idolatry being something that we do in our culture, because maybe, maybe you would say, well, I don't have a statue of Deon or Ashtaroth or BAAL in my house.

But what we've allowed to have happen in our culture is that we've allowed to either worship ourselves or worship things around us.

I mean, I'm going to tell you, I'm not saying any of you do this, but in our culture, right, we.

We have these things where basically these people that act in these movies that mean nothing get in these big award shows and people sit there and basically worship them and give them a literal idol.

They give him a statue and they say, look, you guys are, are people that we worship and adore.

And I'm not saying that all actors are evil, but what I'm saying is, is that we've seen our culture just basically elevate people that are, are not to be worshiped, not to be praised.

And so what he says here is, he says, get rid of Ashtaroth from among you.

And then he says, what?

And prepare your hearts unto the Lord.

So, so this is really interesting here.

He says, number one, commit yourself completely to God.

Number two, get rid of those false gods.

Get rid of that influence into your life.

Now.

Then prepare your hearts unto the Lord.

Meaning now get ready to serve.

Now get ready to sacrifice.

Now you're ready to commit yourself to not just worshiping God, but serving him to every capacity.

Now what does that look like for us?

Well, it's a.

It's a progression thing.

Number one, I can't serve God properly.

I can't.

I can't do the work of the gospel ministry if I'm caught up in the things of this world, if my heart is given over to the passions and lust of the world.

And so he says, get your heart right with God.

Get rid of the bad influences, and then get ready and prepared to serve.

That's what he's saying here.

And that's the same message that we could preach today.

Number one, rededicate your life to Christ before, before you try to get anything out of your life.

I've had people come up to me say, you know, there's this thing plaguing me in my life.

I want to get rid of it.

I. I never say, well, just have more willpower.

Just completely try to avoid that.

No, it starts with the heart.

Because.

Because if I get rid of this problem just by avoiding it, guess what?

There's going to be another problem that pops up.

And if I don't get to the core element of my problem, which is a love for the things of this world, I'm not going to be able to overcome those temptations.

And so he says here, get your heart right with God, get rid of the bad influences.

And then number three, then prepare your heart for service.

A lot of times we flip that.

A lot of times we want to see all the benefits and the blessings of serving God without doing these first two steps.

And so he says, prepare your hearts unto the Lord and serve him only.

So it's a re.

Restatement of what he's basically already said, is that be exclusive to God.

God wants an exclusive relationship with us.

I know that you guys understand the importance of that exclusive relationship, but oftentimes the Bible uses as an analogy Israel basically running into adultery in sin with other people, right?

So God says basically that, that he's married to Israel and Israel is unfaithful.

You study the whole book of Hosea.

It's a whole lesson about that.

And even in the New Testament, we see the same thing as a church.

We're the bride of Christ, were to be exclusively serving him and him alone.

So the irony of all of this would be that as Israel being God's chosen people, they go out and they serve other kings, they serve other false gods.

And so he says, no, serve me alone.

He wants an exclusive relationship.

And there's nothing wrong with saying that God is a jealous God.

There's, there's biblical godly jealousy just as, as, as a husband, I'm not selfishly jealous of my wife, but there's Godly jealousy to say, I want to be exclusive.

I want to have that exclusive relationship.

And that's what I've committed to, and that's what I will live for.

And so that's what God is saying for those people of Israel, if you want to be in this relationship, be exclusive.

And he says, then what will happen?

And he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.

And so he addresses these issues that they have.

Verse 4.

Then the children of Israel did put away Balaam and Ashtaroth.

And so the response is that they do follow.

And so we see Ashtaroth and Balaam.

BAAL was a false God of weather and financial success.

And so this would have been a big draw for the Israelites because they wanted to have financial success, they wanted to have good weather, good crops.

And so that's one of the things that we see leaking into their culture, was that materialism, that fleshly desire in Balaam and Ashtaroth.

And that's repeated over and over again in the Old Testament.

But what we see here is that God gives them the formula to find salvation, to find revival, to find victory.

And initially here we see that they obey.

Then the children of Israel did put away Balaam and Ashtaroth and serve the Lord only.

So it's good news.

It's good news.

They change, they turn away.

And with everything that we see here, this is a legitimate change.

This is.

Their heart is turned to the Lord.

And we're going to see that.

There's a dedication service here, verse five.

And Samuel say, gather all Israel to Mizpah and I will pray for you unto the Lord.

So essentially what we see here is there's like a dedication time where they're going to consecrate their heart, they're going to make a promise to God.

And this is very significant there in Mizpah, because before in Genesis chapter 31, Jacob separated from Laban there.

So there was a distinction of.

Of separating away from evil.

And then there was.

It was a gathering place in Judges chapter 20, a place where Israel came in their repentance.

And so it's a very significant place there, Mispa.

And it's a place that symbolizes and shows a separation away from something evil and something separated to something good, which is a relationship with God.

And so Samuel says, what am I going to do?

I'm going to pray for you.

Samuel had called them to repentance by preaching the truth, and they follow.

And Samuel says, okay, you made an initial step, but I'm going to pray that you stay faithful to this.

And that's what we should do with folks that are coming to the truth of Jesus.

We should celebrate their repentant heart.

But then we should also pray for their faithfulness to stay true to what they have decided to do in their life by committing their life to the Lord.

So where did this all start?

It all started with Samuel obeying God and preaching the truth.

And that's where revival always starts.

Revival is not going to start just by accident.

Revival is always going to be centered around the word of God, the truth of God.

The Bible Says one of my favorite verses is in John 17, John 17:17.

Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is true.

Now what does that word sanctify mean?

You should know that that's, that's a word that is going to be repeated throughout the whole Bible.

Sanctify means to be set aside, to be set apart for a special use.

So the Bible says the way that we can be set aside away from the world is, is by what sanctified them.

By thy truth.

Thy word is truth.

God's word is truth.

And so we are led to that special place of service to God through the word of God, through the truth of God.

And so Samuel says, I'm going to pray that you stay faithful to that.

So they do.

They gather there, verse 6.

And they gathered together in mispah and drew water and poured it out before the Lord and fasted on that day and said, there we have sinned against the Lord.

And so there's a couple things that happens here.

It's a ceremony, ceremonial pouring of the water, which would have been a picture of them pouring themselves out to God.

Obviously, the water itself didn't have any miraculous healing power.

It was an expression of what they already were deciding to do.

But they, they poured out this water as a sign of repentance.

And then basically it was a, it was a, it was a picture of emptying themselves and then a need to be filled.

Right.

And that's what we have to do.

The Bible teaches in the New Testament in, in a couple of different places, in Ephesians and, and in Colossians to, to put off and then put on.

So, so to get rid of the bad.

Yes, but then to put in the good, to infuse the Holy Spirit into our lives, to make Holy Spirit discern decisions.

And so as they're pouring out the water, it's, hey, look, I'm emptying out the bad, but I'm not just going to stay empty.

I'm going to fill myself with the good.

I'm going to allow God to direct me.

And so this is a picture of them doing that.

They, they drew the water, they poured it out.

Then of course, with fasting, that's a recognition of, of being committed to God, to deny oneself of that food so that they can be hungry and thirsting after God.

And so that's a picture of what they would do.

They would fast to make a commitment.

And then they, what they do says they recognize their sin.

They're, what they're essentially doing is they're confessing their sin.

Now, if you've been with me long enough here in Middletown, you should know what the word confess means, literally means.

But it's a Greek word, homologeo.

Say the same thing to agree with somebody about something.

So to confess means to recognize the same thing that God recognizes about our sin.

So that's what confession is.

And so that's what they're essentially doing here.

And.

And so they.

They say, we have sinned against the Lord and Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpah.

So.

So they're confessing now.

First John, chapter one, verse nine, says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And so that's speaking of a restorative relationship with our heavenly Father when we have fallen into sin.

And so that's exactly what we see happening here in First Samuel, chapter seven.

A restorative relationship that starts with a recognition of sin, confession and repentance.

And so that's the technical way you could describe revival.

Revival is a renewal of the heart.

It's an admission of sin.

It's a recognition of sin.

It's a confession of sin, and it's a repentance.

It's a turning away from that sin and turning to God in commitment to him, and then in the process, getting rid of those things which cause us to turn back to those sins.

And so I think it's important to note that when it comes to the church and how we can describe revival and how we can seek revival, right?

What if I came in front of the church and never described or read passages of scripture about revival?

And I just got up in front of the church and said, we need revival, with the assumption that everyone knows what I say we're needing, and then everyone maybe has heard, you know, what revival meant for me when I was a kid.

Okay, some of you might not get this.

Some of you may get this depending on how you grew up.

Okay?

What revival meant for me was that this guy would come into our church who was a really loud preacher, and everyone seemed to, like, really appreciate him, that he was coming into our church.

And we sometimes would even have a big white tent outside.

And we would have service Monday.

We would have service on Sunday, but then Monday through Friday, and it would be every night.

And I didn't have homework that week because our school was attached to the church.

So I'd always say, great.

No homework during revival week.

And for me, and I'm not blaming my Church, they were preaching the truth.

But for me, revival was just like, hey, we're gonna do something different this week.

And then we're all gonna go down forward.

We're all gonna pray a certain prayer, we're all gonna cry about our sin, and then probably next week go right back to what we were doing before.

Okay.

I was at services where, I mean, they had this big bonfire and people were coming out and they were throwing CDs into the fire.

You know, their.

Their worldly music, and they were throwing things, and that's all fine and good.

The problem was, is that some of the people that I knew that were throwing things in the fire had already burned a couple backup CDs for themselves.

So later they could just go back and they.

They had backup plans.

So.

So those outward signs of repentance, those.

Those outward signs of, hey, look, I'm getting rid of that.

If there's not a heart change, it's.

It's really just kind of going through traditional motion.

It's just kind of going through the motions of recognition of, well, that's what everyone else is doing, so I should do that.

So going back to my analogy, if I just got in front of the church and said, hey, we all need revival, so do it.

Well, if we don't know what revival is, it's going to be really hard to do that.

And so what I would say is we need to clearly define when we're talking about revival, repentance, renewal, refreshment, all those things, Biblically speaking, what is that?

And I think that this is one of the many passages of scripture that can point us to what godly revival really looks like.

And sometimes it's not loud and boisterous.

Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not.

We don't.

We don't necessarily have one particular outcome of revival other than we know that it's a heart back to God and away from the things of this world.

And it's.

It's continuous.

So just because I had a.

A moment of rededication 10 years ago, it didn't mean that maybe I need to be rededicated today and I need to come back to him more.

So again, remember what the promise was?

The promise was a victory.

The promise was that God would bless them.

And so verse seven, they're preparing for battle, verse seven.

And when the Philistines heard that the children of Israel were gathered together in Misbah, they would have known that was significant because they're reviving their hearts back to the Lord, the lords of the Philistines.

Went up against Israel.

So they said, okay, we need to strike them now, we need to attack them now.

And when the children of Israel heard it, and this is.

I get so frustrated with the Phil.

The Israelites, but I know this is me, so I have to identify and understand.

I do this too right off for right after that spiritual victory.

What does it say they do?

They fear.

They're afraid of the Philistines.

So right then they.

They rededicate their life to the Lord.

They say, lord, we're getting rid of the things of this world.

We're going to come after you.

We're going to commit our hearts to you.

And then they come to this place and they have the ceremony and they pour out the water and Samuel, their judge, prays for them.

Then they hear the Philistines are coming.

They immediately get afraid.

And.

And so again, this is showing their human frailty to the fact that it didn't last very long.

But nonetheless, God's still faithful.

Verse 8.

And the children of Israel said to Samuel, cease not to cry unto the Lord our God for us that he will save us out of the hand of the Philistines.

And so, so again, there's a lot of ways that you could look at this, but essentially they're still seeking the Lord, like, we're afraid.

Samuel, pray for us.

Now, there is a little bit of a different dynamic in the Old Testament.

You know, today we have something called priesthood of believers, which means you can go to the God, you can go to God anytime, you have that connection with him.

But prior to the New Testament, prior to the veil being torn, there were some elements of having the priests go to the Lord for you.

So that's essentially somewhat what's happening here.

And Samuel took a sucking lamb and offered it for a burnt offering holy unto the Lord.

And Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel, and the Lord heard him.

So even in Israel's inconsistency, we could say it that way.

The heart cry of Samuel to the Lord is heard and the Lord is faithful.

Verse 10.

And Samuel was offering up the burnt offering.

The Philistines drew near to the battle against Israel.

And so know it's.

It's about to come, it's about to happen.

Israel is about to fight.

And then this is amazing, verse 10.

This shows how God is more powerful than us.

He's all knowing and he can step in at any point, in any time to deal with things.

And it says, but the Lord thundered with a great thunder on the day upon the Philistines.

And discomfited them, and they were smitten before Israel.

And so what we can essentially see here is that Israel doesn't even have to fight the battle.

God fought the battle for them.

And this was a special work of God.

The Israelites heard it, but it confused the Philistines.

And essentially what we can see here is that even in their fear, God comes in and gives them the victory.

And this is.

This is really how it is with our own life.

Because I wish I could come up here and tell you that, hey, you know, you have the capability of being perfectly faithful, and that's when God's going to be faithful to you.

But I'm going to tell you that all of us to some degree, are going to be unfaithful.

All of us are going to waver, all of us are going to stumble.

But the beauty is, is that when God makes a promise to us, he keeps that promise and he sees our heart and he recognizes that.

And then God fights that battle for us.

And so they recognize this battle.

This is the type of victory that they had seen in the past, one that they hadn't seen in a while.

But essentially it's a renewal and God is going to bless them and give them the victory.

And so verse number 11, it says, and the men of Israel went out a mispah and pursued the Philistines and smote them until they came under, under Beth car.

So obviously the Israelites go out and actually finish the battle.

But it's ultimately given to them through the hand of God because the Philistines are essentially disarmed.

Verse 12.

Then Samuel took a stone and set it between Misfah and Shen and called the name of it Ebenezer.

Now you have to know what Ebenezer means to understand the significance, but it kind of explains it.

At the end of that verse, verse 12, it says, saying, hitherto hath the Lord helped us.

And the word Ebenezer literally means stone of hell.

And so essentially what we see here is that Samuel recognizes the help of God.

He sets this stone up recognizing that God is the one who helped them for this victory.

And I think it's important for us to have Ebenezer stones.

Okay, So I don't think that we literally have to have an Ebenezer stone in our life, but we need to have things in our life that can remind us of God's faithfulness in the midst of battle.

I know one of the things that Alicia and I used to do.

We haven't been as faithful with this.

But we had at one point in time an Ebenezer book that I was trying to write down all the things that God had done in our life.

And it was.

It was amazing because once you start writing down all the things that God does for you, it starts becoming obviously a lot harder for you to complain about the things that you don't have when you see all the things that you do have.

And I think that sometimes as Christians, we forget about all the times that God has been faithful to us before in the midst of this next battle.

But when we're reminded of those beautiful things that God has done for us, we're able to go back and say, just as God has been faithful to me before, he will be faithful to me now and he'll be faithful to me tomorrow.

And that's what Samuel does there, which I think is.

Is a wise thing to do.

Verse 13.

So the Philistines were subdued, and they came no more into the coast of Israel.

And the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel.

And so this shows really the power of God ultimately.

And it always does.

It always shows that God is all powerful, but it also shows the blessing of one man who is faithful.

Samuel is faithful to the Lord by coming and preaching the Word, and a hard word at that.

And then on top of that, his prayer of faithfulness after they had committed.

And ultimately we see one man's faithfulness to the Lord is multiplied amongst many people there in Israel.

Verse 14.

And the cities which the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel, from Ekron, even unto Gath and the coast thereof did Israel deliver out of the hands of the Philistines.

And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites.

And so what we can see here at the end of this chapter, it might not mean a lot to us because we're not there at that time and understanding the culture, but the fact that, as it says in verse 13, all the way down to the verse 17, that there's this victory, this is ultimate victory, and there's peace with Israel.

And the Philistines essentially are no longer having any strongholds in the land of Canaan and the land of Israel.

And there's just this wonderful victory.

Even though Samuel wasn't a military leader, he obviously allowed the Lord, or he didn't allow the Lord, but he allowed the people of Israel to see the Lord and to have those spiritual victories and military victories.

And so there were these wonderful things happening.

Verse 15.

And Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life.

And he went from year to year in circuit to Bethel and Gilgal.

So basically tells us that Samuel traveled around, kind of like a circuit rider to encourage the people.

He went from Bethel to Gilgal to Mispa and judge Israel in all those places.

And that idea of judgment is just essentially confronting them, administrating, leading all those different types of things.

He's not a king, which is going to play a role in the next chapter, but he's basically God's emissary there in Israel.

He's the ambassador of God to the people.

And.

And then verse 17.

And his return was to Rama, for there was his house, and there he judged Israel, and there he built an altar unto the Lord.

So it kind of.

It like, sounds really great.

It ties it all into a beautiful abode there at the end.

Samuel is faithful.

God is faithful.

Israel is on top.

Israel is victorious.

It's.

It's kind of like if it was a Hollywood movie, right?

It's the ending.

You see the credits rolling.

Samuel is victorious.

He's riding around, giving people encouragement, guiding people, teaching people, administrating people.

But then you see chapter eight, first Samuel, Chapter eight, Israel.

And we'll jump on this next week.

But essentially Israel isn't happy with this setting.

They're not happy with this scenario.

They want a king just like everybody else.

Instead of allowing God to be their king and allowing God to choose the way that it should be, they wanted to choose their own way.

And so we're going to talk about that next week.

As Samuel is an old man, there is a call, a cry for a king.

And many of you know that the first human king of Israel is Saul.

And we're going to talk about how Saul is chosen.

And that's going to play out as as many of you know the story there.

But then ultimately we know that, that coming after Saul comes David, and we're going to hit that as we come along here in the study.

So I. I definitely wish that I could tell you that the end of chapter seven was smooth and everything went that way forever.

But most of you know, if not all of you know that there's going to be ups and downs.

And just like in our own life, there's ups and downs and there's struggles and there's rebellion and there's always a need for revival.

And ultimately, if.

If you know the story of the judges, there's that cycle that just keeps happening.

And.

And that's what we're going to see happen here.

Maybe in a different way, though.

So we'll end there.

We'll come back next week and we'll look at First Samuel Chapter.

Thank you again for listening to the Middletown Baptist Church podcast.

I hope that this sermon has been a blessing for you.

If you would like to find out more information about our church or this sermon, you can find us at middletownbaptistchurch.org or find us on Facebook or YouTube.

You could also email me directly at Josh massaro@middletownbaptistchurch.com.

if you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and follow along for future podcast and updates.

Thank you so much.

God Bless.

Have a wonderful day.