Trust in God Alone Part 2

Narrator: When tough times come, you may be tempted to blame God, but a much better path to take is to cry out to God and draw near to him. That's the lesson in front of us today on Abounding Grace.
Ed Taylor: The nation of Israel was living in unrepentance. And because of that, they were not living by faith. And because of that, they met defeat after defeat. And unfortunately, the same life can be seen over and over again among those who call upon the name of Jesus today. And how does it start? Well, it starts in this particular chapter—it starts with calamity. And that calamity is a time of testing. Where will you turn? Will you blame God or will you cry out to God? And you can see the path; we see the end: Ichabod, the glory has departed. Or you can draw near to God, and the Bible says if you humble yourself before the mighty hand of God, he will lift you up.
Guest (Male): Maybe you've been through a crisis or tragedy in recent months. It can really hit us hard, and we might even wonder at such times, "Why would God do this?" But is it wise to blame God when bad things happen or calamities occur? We'll wrestle through that question today on Abounding Grace as Pastor Ed Taylor returns to his study of 1 Samuel. The plan today is to cover chapter four, where the nation of Israel was blaming God for the calamity they went through.
Ed Taylor: Israel, like so many today, blaming God for their tragedies and calamity, but never seeking God for guidance and direction for their lives. Instead, what we find here with the nation of Israel, they call for the Ark of the Covenant. That'll do it. We want the Ark of the Covenant, which was basically a box that God instructed to be built, made of wood overlaid with gold, with a lid, the mercy seat, two angels on either side, where once a year on the Day of Atonement, the priest would go into the Holy of Holies and sprinkle blood upon the mercy seat for the atonement of the sins of the people, the people of the covenant. And instead of seeking the God of the box, they sought the box. I see that happen as well. Their solution was to use the ark as a good luck charm. That's what we need. We need the ark. We need the Ark of the Covenant to be with us. They're internally longing for the presence of God, but externally they substitute for something that's empty. They became idolatrous with the Ark of the Covenant. Same thing happens today with necklaces and amulets and little idols and rosary beads and Virgin Mary candles and little altars that are set up. Those all speak to me of a desire to be close to God, but they're all poor substitutes for the presence of God. That's what's happening here. We long for the presence of God. And the good news is that the presence of God is in every true believer. We don't lose the presence of God; we lose the consciousness of the presence of God. And a lot of people will use those things in their lives to remind them of the consciousness of the presence of God, when in reality, the presence of God has never left. He indwells in us. They're just things. We do not want to look to objects when we need to look to the Lord. Objects, or even they're looking at the Ark of the Covenant superstitiously as if it has some power. But the power was the presence of God, not the box—the very presence of God. Verse five now: "And when the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all of Israel shouted so loudly that the earth shook." Now when the Philistines—they're so excited, it's so amazing. And now when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, "What does the sound of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews mean?" And then they understood that the Ark of the Lord had come into the camp. So the Philistines were afraid and they said, "God has come into the camp." And they said, "Woe to us, for such a thing has never happened before. Woe to us. Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness." So what does it do in verse nine? They tell each other, "Be strong and conduct yourselves like men, you Philistines, that you do not become servants of the Hebrews as they have been to you. Conduct yourselves like men and fight." So the Philistines fought and Israel was defeated and every man fled to his tent, and there was a very great slaughter. There fell now Israel 30,000 foot soldiers. So what they really believed would aid them in victory had the exact opposite effect. Which, you notetakers need to understand something: whenever you choose the arm of the flesh over the leading of the spirit, great failure awaits. There is no way around it. If you sow to the flesh, the Bible says you and I will reap corruption. Getting the ark stirred up the children of Israel so much that it startled the Philistines and it stirred them up to even fight harder. Well, you know, if they've got their God, then we need to fight harder and the children of Israel found out that there was no power in the box. It's the presence of God that brought power. So they relied on their own strength, the children of Israel here, in thinking the ark was their victory and not the Lord of the ark. Not only that, they failed number one because they relied on their own strength. Number two, they fought without the presence and the blessing of God. Because we know that with the presence and the blessing of God, we'll know—we haven't learned it yet, but we will in the future in Joshua. We've already studied Joshua because we took the books out of order. But later on in the history of Israel, we'll find out that God gives Joshua very specific fighting orders: march around the city for six days, on the seventh day march a little more and scream, and you'll win. That was the presence of God. The direction was not military. It wasn't strategy from all the sessions of previous battles or anything. It was just, "Do what I say and I'll fight for you." And here, the opposite. They've got the, "What are we supposed to do? Why is God against us? Let's get the ark. Let's get the ark. Yeah, let's get the ark. That'll do it." We'll take the presence, but God wasn't with them. And they relied upon the strength of their own flesh. They fought apart from the blessing of God and the presence, and their human plan backfired and stirred up the Philistines to fight harder. And such is the result of the plans of man: disaster. Thousands more lives lost. Would you turn over to Galatians chapter three that I might encourage you with this truth? Galatians chapter three. We won't spend a lot of time on it, but enough to remind you. In Galatians chapter three, would you pick up with verse one with me? Paul writing to the churches in the Galatia region—churches that have had a strong relationship with God, had great fruit in their relationship with God, been used greatly. And Paul writes to them: "Oh, foolish Galatians, who's bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?" Now check this out, verse three: "Are you so foolish? Having begun in the spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?" And I ask you to ask the same question of yourself: Have you begun your relationship with God in the spirit and now you're so foolish of trying to perfect it in the flesh? Have you begun with a clear leading of God and his speaking to you in the spirit, and now over time you have become smarter or more wise or you've got a few experiences under your belt, so now you have the answer for everything because you've experienced it and you've been through it? You're not getting a fresh word from the Lord for the situation in front of you. Don't you see the foolishness of leaving the work of the spirit? You started so well. You were even persecuted for your faith, he would tell the Galatians. You were taunted and ridiculed and made fun of, but you believed and God changed you. And now you're attempting in your own power and your own strength to move forward and you're stalled. And that's a trap that many people fall into: trying to help God out a little bit. I'll help you out, Lord. I think of the biggest episode of trying to help God out has to be, if there are a top five, this is one of the top five, is Abram and Sarai not waiting on the Lord for the promised child. And Sarai, you know, the impatience—and I can grasp a little bit of the impatience, the impossibility of the womb, just looking at each other and going, "You know, I know God said we're going to get a kid, but look at you. Well, look at you." "You're old, man. So are you. I don't think it's going to happen. I just don't think it's going to happen. Yeah, I don't think it's going to happen. I mean, look at you. I know, look at you." You know, you just have those conversations. Do you have a kid yet? What do you mean, have a kid yet? We're old. But we're not dumb. We can help God out a little bit. He promised a kid. You're still alive. Yep, I'm still alive. Yep, we may not be able to produce a kid, but I bet you we could figure it out. I got a handmaid. It's custom. What's the big deal? Everybody does it. Why don't you just go into the handmaid? Maybe it's me. Maybe it's not you, Abram. Maybe it's me. And then we'll just go ahead and go into her. And he does. Like an idiot, he does. It's just like, you know, we are like that. We just don't get it. We get caught up in the flesh, and we get caught up in fear, and we get caught up in anxiety, and we get caught up in the moment. And it leads us to making dumb, fleshly, idiotic decisions. There's another word for that: sin. And they didn't wait. And the handmaid, Hagar, she was with child. She gave birth. Remember his name? Ishmael. The problem of Ishmael is still with us today in a very real way all throughout the Middle East. Still with us today. I wonder, though, lest we point the finger at Abram and Sarai because they're long gone in heaven, enjoying the presence of God because they got there not because of their failure, but they got there by faith. They got there by faith, not by their works, not by their failures. And so I wonder how many little Ishmaels we've got running around in our life where we just—maybe not so big that's causing world turmoil the rest of our lives, but how about family turmoil? Issues in our own personal lives or in our minds because we decided that we were going to help God out a little bit? It's never too late to repent and to turn back from that. But you've got to admit it. You can't go, "Oh God, what calamity you brought on me." I don't know. You need to really ask yourself: is that a little Ishmael? And just present your Ishmael to the Lord and say, "God, I'm sorry. Help me. You see the weakness of my life." We don't want to leave. We're not going to help God out. The Bible says being confident, Philippians chapter one, being confident of this very thing: that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Ishmael or not, God will finish his work. God will complete it. You don't need to help him out. You don't need to jump in to help things. Just cry out to him. God doesn't need my help; I need his. And if I don't learn my lesson, 4,000 deaths is going to turn to 30,000 and a lot of people are going to get hurt. Now, of course, those numbers may not be true for us. But what if it just went from four to 30? That's over seven times worse than the first time. It wasn't double. It's difficult. Not only that, look at verse 11 now. It says, "And the Ark of God was captured and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died." Then a man of Benjamin ran from the battle line into the same day and came into Shiloh with his clothes torn and dirt on his head. Now when he came there, there was Eli sitting on the seat by the wayside watching, for his heart trembled for the Ark of God. And when the man came into the city and told it all, the city cried out. And when Eli heard the noise of the outcry, he said, "What does the sound of this tumult mean?" And the man came hastily and told Eli. Eli was now 98 years old and his eyes were so dim that he could not see. Verse 16: "Then the man said to Eli, 'I am he who came from battle. I fled today from the battle line.'" And he said, "What happened, my son?" And so the messenger answered and said, "Israel has fled before the Philistines and there's been a great slaughter among the people. Also your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead and the Ark of God has been captured." Then it happened when he heard the mention of the Ark of God that Eli fell off the seat backward by the side of the gate. His neck was broken and he died, for the man was old and heavy, and he had judged Israel 40 years. About 20 miles away, the battlefield. If you look on a map, it's about 20 miles away. So this poor messenger had to carry a heavy message running back for all this 20 miles over a day's journey. And he met anxious Eli. Eli's concerned. He hears the tumult. He hears everything that's going on. And it wasn't the loss of his kids that caused him to fall over. He was upset about the ark. You could see how far he was as a leader away from the heart of God. It wasn't the people that moved him; it was the religious artifacts. And believe me, the Ark of the Covenant was a very important piece of furniture for the nation of Israel, but it wasn't more important than people. The blood of the atonement, when it was spread by the high priest going in once a year, it was on the Ark of the Covenant for the sake of the people. Jesus died for people. God gave himself for people. Whenever things are more important to you than people, you just know you're not right. You just know it. And that's what did Eli in. Remember God through little Samuel told him this is how it's going to go down: "You guys are going to die on the same day." That's what happened. Verse 19 now: "Now his daughter-in-law, Phinehas's wife, was with child, due to be delivered. And when she heard the news that the Ark of God was captured, that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she bowed herself, gave birth, and her labor pains came upon her." And about the time of her death, the woman who stood by her said to her, "Do not fear, for you have borne a son." But she did not answer, nor did she regard it. Then she named the child Ichabod, saying the glory has departed from Israel, because the Ark of God had been captured and because of her father-in-law and her husband. And she said, "The glory has departed from Israel, and the Ark of God has been captured." And so faced with such horrific news of her husband's death and Eli's death and all the bad news of the ark and defeat, Phinehas's wife is despondent. She gives birth, utters her baby's name, Ichabod—the glory is departed. And it was the fleshly decisions of the nation and the leadership that led this young woman to face sorrow in a time of gladness. Of course, she was married to a man who lived in a fleshly lifestyle. We knew that already, but it's sad that God just took care of it. And what a sad ending. The glory of God, as represented by the Ark of the Covenant, indeed did depart. The Philistines ripped off the ark, but God's presence was never invited in. And it's a sad state of affairs. The nation of Israel was living in unrepentance. And because of that, they were not living by faith. And because of that, they met defeat after defeat. And unfortunately, the same life can be seen over and over again among those who call upon the name of Jesus today. And how does it start? Well, it starts in this particular chapter—it starts with calamity. And that calamity is a time of testing. Where will you turn? Will you blame God or will you cry out to God? And you can see the path; we see the end: Ichabod, the glory has departed. Or you can draw near to God, and the Bible says if you humble yourself before the mighty hand of God, he will lift you up. I want to end with this scripture. Would you turn over to 2nd Timothy, please, chapter three? 2nd Timothy chapter three. God is faithful and will be available to all who call upon his name. Even as judgment had to come, there's always a faithful remnant. There's always a group seeking him. I know you may feel like it's small and your life even insignificant, but it's not. Seek the Lord, the Bible says, while he may be found. And let me just lay this scripture out for you so you can pray through it in your own life. In 2nd Timothy chapter three, beginning in verse one, it says, "But know this, in the last days perilous times will come, for men will be lovers of themselves and lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." And notice this, verse five. This is such a sobering verse: "Having a form of godliness but denying its power." That does not want to describe your life. Having an outward form of godliness. I've got the trinket, I've got the idol, I've got the candle, I've got the Bible. I've got everything that makes me look like it, but I don't have the power and the presence of our God. They will act like if they are religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. That's powerful. That's how I felt when I read it. They will act as if they are religious, but they will reject the power that can make them godly. You must stay away from people like that. Or from such people, turn away. The Lord just speaks to us and lets us—you know, we started out today with just this radical step of faith. And maybe God hasn't called you into the mission field. Maybe. And maybe he has and you've got to get things in order in order for you to go. Have you put your house in order? Make sure things are tied up so you have no thing tethering you back. But maybe you're not called into the mission field, but there are steps of faith that God has for you that are just as monumental. I know that God hasn't called me to go on a boat. I get seasick. That's how I know. Ed, I get seasick. That's pretty simple. I'm a land lover. I know what God's calling is in my life. But I don't know what new steps of faith he wants me to take. I want to find that out. Just because I know God's call on my life doesn't mean stepping out in faith is over. I want to step out in faith in places where, okay, God, I don't want to talk about steps of faith 14 years ago. I want to talk about steps of faith 14 minutes ago. What God's doing in my life, how he's leading me in my family, and what he's asked me to do. Fresh, new work of his spirit, not blaming him for calamity.
Guest (Male): This is Abounding Grace. You're listening to a message in 1 Samuel from Pastor and Bible Teacher Ed Taylor. Catch a replay when you visit aboundinggraceradio.com or listen wherever you get your podcasts and at oneplace.com. Pastor Ed, from time to time we like to share some encouraging emails that come into Abounding Grace, which testify to the good things that God is up to. And I understand you've got a good one from Tim in Lexington, Kentucky.
Ed Taylor: Yeah, it wasn't just a few days ago that we were encouraging emails to come through. And literally, I get an email at least every day. I mean, literally, I get 50, 60 emails a day, and some of them are from radio that we broadcast Abounding Grace online through oneplace.com and then on radio all over the country. But this was a great email. I was so encouraged. It came in the morning, I woke up to it, and it said something like this: "Dear Pastor Ed, several years ago my stepdaughter suffered a TBI in a car accident. Every weekday she attends this acquired brain injury school at least two to three times a week. We get to listen to your broadcast. She loves you, as do I." That's an encouraging thing. Just side note, back to the email. "God has given you deep insight into the scripture, no gray area in your interpretation or delivery, which I appreciated. And after listening to you for the last three years, I realized it was beyond time to email you and thank you for your ministry and your message. May God continue to bless you and your family and your church. Tim in Lexington, Kentucky." Super encouraging. And I'm grateful for you, Tim, and everyone else that we get to be connected. I know it's through radio, but we get to be connected. And I really do believe what I teach. I may not be the best teacher, I may not hit all the high marks, but you know, I am who God has made me to be. And I continue to grow, and I'm confident in that, that the Lord will use me. And I'm just like John the Baptist in many ways: I'm just a voice. That's it. I'm just a voice pointing to the one who I'm unworthy to even untie his sandals. So thanks for emailing me. And you guys, email me. This email came through my personal website, edtaylor.org. And there I write all about grief, leadership, things on my mind. There's—you can search through. There's a whole segment in my website of 10 verses about over 200 topics that you're looking for verses. You can just put the word—somebody emailed me recently, "Can you share some verses with me on lust?" Boom. I just put lust in the search bar and 10 verses popped up. And also on that website, you'll find book recommendations, grief recommendations, leadership books, discipleship. It's a very thorough resource, edtaylor.org. And of course, you can email me there. I love to hear from you.
Guest (Male): If you'd like to share something with us, we'd love that. Stop by aboundinggraceradio.com, click on "Contact Us." We look forward to hearing from you soon. Here in the month of August, we've picked out an excellent book written by Bob Hoekstra called *How to Counsel God's Way*. Now, this book is a call for God's people to return to Jesus as our wonderful counselor so that we avoid the pitfalls of following after man's wisdom and trust the Lord Jesus for his reliable riches that are already ours in Christ. We'll send you a copy with our thanks for a gift of $25 or more to Abounding Grace. Please remember it is through your financial support that we're able to come to you day by day on this station and others like it. Your gift, whatever the size, would be greatly appreciated and put to good use. Request your book today by calling us toll-free at 877-30-GRACE. Again, 877-30-GRACE. You can also order the book online at calvaryco.store. Don't miss our next study in 1 Samuel with Pastor Ed next time on Abounding Grace. Abounding Grace is brought to you by Calvary Church in Aurora, Colorado.