Harbor Church - Mid City

We’re going through I Samuel and we’re in a 2 part series that addresses this question:  “Is God really there?”  Last week we looked at how God shows up in really ordinary circumstances—like looking for lost donkeys—through providence.  This week, we’re going to look at the opposite—how God shows up in really remarkable and extraordinary ways.

(1)  God’s extraordinary power is revealed as he transforms lives

There really is nothing more extraordinary than a transformed life.  Someone who seemingly transforms into a different person before your very eyes.  Now this happens in our story with Saul, and I think this is one of the most interesting case studies of a transformed life because, from what I can tell, it is not a full transformation.   Admittedly, to quote our president elect, making the final judgment on one’s salvation is above my paygrade.  But let me read what happens to you again and then we’ll talk about it why it appears that Saul’s transformation was only partial.  It says in v6, “The Spirit of the Lord will come upon you in power, and you will prophesy with them; and you will be changed into a different person…v9 As Saul turned to leave Samuel, God changed Saul’s heart.”  So, here you see the Spirit of God coming over Saul, he gets new abilities to prophesy that he didn’t have, and it says that his heart is changed. 

What you see here is the same thing that you see happen with Samson.  In Jdgs 14:6,19 & 15:14 the activity of the Spirit is described in exactly the same way.  “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power so that he tore the lion apart.”  In the Old Testament, what you often see is God’s Spirit coming over people for the accomplishment of a particular task. For example, the exact same language is used when the Spirit of God came upon the 70 elders of Israel in Num. 11 and they were given prophetic gifts to judge.   So what we have are examples of God’s Spirit coming over someone and using them to accomplish his purposes without bringing them into       saving relationship with Him—that is, without giving them a new spiritual heart.

But how can you have the spirit of God come over you and not be in a saving relationship with Jesus?  John Oswalt related this to the analogy of a coach and his team & I think he is right.  For example, I am an Alabama fan, secondary to my allegiance to UVA, but my blood ran crimson growing up in Alabama so I am still a big fan.  Alabama got a new coach and is sitting at #1 right now and much of the talk has gone like this, “Alabama has a new spirit under Nick Saban.  They have a new heart.  Nick Saban has infused his spirit into the team.  They reflect his winning nature in a way they didn’t before.”  This seems to be what is going on with the change in Saul.  The Spirit of the Lord hasn’t given him new life, but the Spirit of the Lord is at work in him and has changed him temporarily in some respects into a different person much like that of a coach with his team.

Some of you can relate:  you’re here this morning and you know that you have had spiritual experiences that seemed real and seemed like God’s spirit was at work in your life but yet you’re not sure whether there even is a God.  Our text with Saul shows you that what you have felt is very possible.  God’s Spirit can be at work in you using you to accomplish his purposes & causing you to ask questions, but you may not yet be a Christian in the sense of having a saving relationship with him.  People can be pastors, lead people to the Lord, be in church for all of their life, and not be in a saving relationship with Jesus. 

See, my friends, I am not in any way trying to scare you, I just don’t want you to end up like Saul—very religious, but no saving, life-giving relationship with God.  He was religious, and religious people trust in their own effort.  He was the King—of course God liked him, b/c, well, after all, he was the king.  He was in constant competition.  When anyone would mention this David and his military victories he would become outraged.  Later in this book, the people develop a chant in ch 18, “Saul has slain his thousands, David his tens of thousands.”  And this chant was like placing a smoldering iron out of the fire on Saul’s flesh.  It burned him up, b/c he was deeply religious.  His relationship with God wasn’t dependent on grace—it was dependent on his own effort, his own strengths. 

This is what religious people do.  They try to earn God’s approval.  They work really hard, and they trust themselves and their own record before God, in earning enough spiritual points, that they’ve been good enough.  Jesus may be your model or your example by which you’re trying to live your life, but He isn’t your Savior.  You have a self-salvation project going on.

Ironically, irreligious people do the same thing.  They have a self-salvation project going as well, only in a different way.  Rather than trying to keep all the rules and impress God, they break all the rules and say, “To hell with God (and I use that word intentionally).”  I’m not sure that god exists and I certainly don’t need him telling me to run my life.  I am the master of my universe. 

But the Bible is pretty clear.  You’re not the master of the universe, and self-salvation projects don’t work, either the religious or the irreligious type.  And here is why, and it is the 2^nd point…

2.  God’s extraordinary power is revealed through weakness

Weakness.  If you want to experience God, then you have got to get in touch with your own weakness.  Period.  Weakness is the way, my friends, and the more you get in touch with your weakness, the more you will see and experience God’s extraordinary power.

Let’s look at how God gave Saul every opportunity to get in touch with his own weakness and consequent need for God, but Saul missed it.  Here is what Saul should have picked up on. He is a Benjamite.  We read this last week and it came just before our text when Samuel was telling him that he was going to be king of Israel.  Saul responds in 9:21, “But am I not a Benjamite?”  Why do you think Saul lists this as a deal-breaker?  Well, it is because of what his clan—the Benjamites—did just a few years previous.  See Saul is coming along only a couple of generations after the events in the book of Judges.  And in Judges 19-21 we read about how the Benjamites became the most hatred tribe in Israel.  What they did is that they took an Israelite man and tried to rape him, but instead ending up raping and killing the woman who was with him.  Israel then made war against the Benjamites and the Benjamites killed tens of thousands of Israelites.  The Israelites developed such a hatred for the Benjamites that they vowed no Israelite woman could ever marry a Benjamite.  This particularly problematic for the Benjamites, since all of their women had been killed through this series of battles.  So do you know what the Benjamites did?  They conspired with some of the Israelites who felt sorry for them and didn’t want to have a tribe of Israel wiped out and said, “We’ll hold a dance and when the ladies take the dance floor, all you Benjamites rush from the bushes and grab a wife.”  You can imagine what this did for public relations between the Benjamites and the rest of Israel.  Thus, the book of Judges closes in a moral tailspin, noting, “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.”

Things really couldn’t get much worse.  They needed a king.  But who is the one God chooses?  A Benjamite.  Pt:  Saul, you have no political power.  You’re politically weak—trust me.

But it isn’t just that he lacked political power.  Saul also was completely devoid of prophetic gifts, something again that should have caused him to celebrate weakness and trust God for spiritual gifts, but, again, he missed it.  See our text says, “When all those who had formerly known him saw him prophesying with the prophets, they asked each other, “What is this that has happened to the son of Kish?  Is Saul also among the prophets?  A man who lived there answered, “And who is their father?  So it became a saying:  “Is Saul also among the prophets?”  The people are so shocked that Saul is prophesying that they came up with an idiom, “Is Saul among the prophets?”  It would be like an American who is a football fan watching an unbelievable football upset and saying, “Well, that is why they play the games.  You just never know.”   But around Gibeah, when they saw something amazing, they developed a new idiom based on God’s extraordinary work, “Is Saul also among the prophets?”

So here you have a guy who has no political power, no prophetic gifts, and God decides, “Perfect.  Just what I am looking for.”  Why?  I Cor. 12: 9 spells it out:  “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.”  The weaker we are, the more it accentuates God’s power when he works through us.  See, this is what Saul missed—weakness.  He kept boasting in his strength—his physical stature, killing thousands.  He kept saying to God, “I got it.  I can handle this throne.”  And finally God said, “As you wish, and removed himself.” 

Are you Saul?  Are you telling God, “I have got it.”  Being a father or mother—God, I got it.  In my job—God, I got it, I work hard and am competent at the office.  You may not say this—but you’re                  anemic prayer life says it loudly to God.  My friends—this is a spiritually dangerous place to be, and it is one that all of us slip into all too often.  I found myself repenting of my Saul-like tendencies this morning b/c I really long for the extraordinary power of Christ to rest on me and the way that happens is when we signal to him, “Jesus, I need you, and here is why.  And you lay out all of your own inabilities, and all the reasons that you can’t accomplish what it seems that he is calling you to do.  The more you boast in your weakness, the more Jesus delights in filling you up.

Lest you think I am overstating the importance of us boasting in our weaknesses, let me show you how 3 great Christian writers knew this and all did their best to work it into our hearts through story form.  In fact, they were all shaped by one another.  The first is the least famous named George MacDonald, though he had a profound influence on 2 much more famous writers named CS Lewis & Tolkien. 

GEORGE MACDONALD:  Take Macdonald’s novel Thomas Wingfold.  Thomas Wingfold is the pastor of the local Anglican church in Glaston who doesn’t have a relationship with Jesus—a story that is all too common.  He is religious, but has no relationship with Jesus.  Interestingly enough, the human instrument God uses to guide him in this journey was Joseph Polwarth, gatekeeper of the manor park, a man with no social stature whatsoever.  Polwarth was a deformed dwarf who suffered terribly from asthma and experienced tremendous grief in his lifetime.  But it is in this dwarf that a pastor meets and encounters someone who knows Jesus intimately and he ends up leading his leader to Jesus. 

CS Lewis has this throughout his works.  If you have read the Chronicles of Narnia, who is it that always sees the Lion in the stories?  Little Lucy, the youngest of the 4 siblings.  See the lion is the Christ figure in the story, and the children often get lost and they don’t want to listen to their little baby sister.  But their little baby sister, the weakest of the bunch, has the faith of a child and sees Aslan and wants to follow him, even though often times it doesn’t appear to make sense to walk in the direction that he is leading.  So God chooses weakness, a little dependent child, to shame the self-dependent siblings. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

JRR TOLKIEN:  Not surprisingly, Lewis good friend Tolkien also picks up on God’s theme of weakness.  See, really, if you don’t understand the Biblical doctrine of boasting in your weakness, then I don’t think you’ll understand the Lord of the Rings b/c this doctrine lies at its heart.  Lord of the Rings is the story of a great ring that was made to rule in power by Sauron.  And at the beginning of the story Isildor is fighting Sauron and cuts the ring off his finger and has a chance to gain power over Sauron & the forces of evil by taking this powerful ring and throwing it into the fire, but he doesn’t get the importance of ruling through weakness.  He misses that he is too weak to wear the ring and not have it control him.  His own lust for power overcomes him, and he puts the ring on rather than destroying it.  But then the ring was lost for thousands of years until a little Hobbit ended up with it. And once it is found, a counsel is called to determine what to do with it.  1:28:55 to 1:32:28.  WATCH CLIP

In the clip that we just watched, a fight erupts over what to do with it.  Boromir—the strong warrior—made the first speech just before the clip we watched arguing that they should keep the ring and rule with it through strength.  See, just like Isildor, he doesn’t understand the doctrine of weakness and he isn’t in touch with his own weaknesses (namely, his lust for power), and so he argues to keep it and use it, so that strength prevails by power & force.  And it is his dependence on his own strength that leads to his demise and almost the entire fellowship a bit later.  Finally, Elron speaks and says what Aragorn and Gandolf both said.  To gain power, they must lose it.  They must throw power away, into the fire of mordor.  Elron, Gandolf, Aragorn—they get it—strength comes through weakness.   You gain power by throwing it away.  Sounds a lot like what Jesus said, doesn’t it.  To gain life, lose it. 

But then there is the question of who will & who can throw the ring in the fire. Getting into mordor and taking it to the gates of fire is the most difficult quest imaginable, and as they talk about it, a fight erupts.  The dwarf won’t let the elf have it, and vice-versa, and Boromir argues for men, and who is ends up being chosen—a hobbit.  A little furry footed, fat, short character who couldn’t win a fight with an ant.  The smallest, weakest character is chosen for the most difficult and critical task.  Why?  B/c hobbits, of all the group, were most in touch with their weakness.  They were the least likely to think they could put the ring on & rule with it.  They knew how hopeless they would be to rule by force.  Yet, even Frodo, in the end, isn’t weak enough.  He too, gives in to the power of the ring. 

But the GOSPEL is that the true King Jesus Christ came and he didn’t lust after power & seize it by force.  Phillipians 2 says that the King of all Glory, Jesus Christ, didn’t consider equality with God something to be grasped or held onto (even though it was his), but he freely gave it up and humbled himself, and became a servant, and made himself an obedient servant all the way to death.  See the strong one became weak and identified with us in our weakness.  And he identified with us so completely that he took on our sin on the cross.  He bore the ring of our sin, and he destroyed the ring in the fires of hell, where it belonged.  Thus we say in the creeds, “He descended into hell.”  The King of all glory and power gave it all up—ultimate strength becoming ultimately weak—for you. 

In doing so, he made it possible for us to experience in full what Saul only experienced in part:  the Spirit of God coming over us in a saving, life-giving way.  Not just to give us new abilities as Saul had, but to give us a new heart, new spiritual life, one where he promises to never leave us or forsake us.  My friends, have you gotten in touch with your weakness to the point of identifying yourself with King Jesus as Savior?

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