1 Samuel 15 (part 1)
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. So, we typically walk through books of the Bible.
We've been walking through First Samuel. Now, we are in chapter 15. So, you can go ahead and turn there. Uh my kids a couple of years ago uh were at a grandparents house and they discovered the game Operation. But you remember the game Operation?
He's got a little dude. He's got different organs and bones. He's got tweezers and you got to carefully extract every single organ bone from uh this uh guy who's being operated on. But if you hit the edges, what happens?
buzzer goes off. And uh as a kid, I hit the buzzer a lot. I was not going to be a surgeon. Just was not didn't have the steady hand. And I watch my children engage in the same practices just and nailing the edges at every point.
Just trying to get that one little bit of uh organ, one little main thing out. And that is what 1st Samuel 15 feels like. It feels like there's this really good truth in it, this main point, uh, that that you're just trying to to get out of it. But if you move too far to the left or right, you're going to hit the edges, and there's a buzzer that goes off in our minds. The main focus of 1st Samuel 15 is uh, as we continue to watch Saul fall on his face, this is the time that really solidifies the end of his kingship.
like this is this is the last uh form of disobedience that he takes to where God is moving on completely from him. And I I I'd love to focus on that, but there's some edges that we hit that buzzers just go off in our brains where it's like, I don't know if I can focus on that because I just hit this. And what we're going to run into is a very vivid display of the wrath of God. that God's wrath in this passage is vivid in a way that is uh different than a lot of other places in the Scriptures and it's just we're going to hit that edge well all over this chapter. So instead of doing this all in one sermon this week I decided this need to be two sermons.
So 1st Samuel 15, we're going to do it again next week and we're going to hit this main point of what's actually happening in the story. But we got to reckon with this vivid display of the wrath of God because I think there's a weakness within us as we approach the text as Western Americans approaching this text. Like I've got a I've got a weak lower back. It's not getting any better. It's probably always going to be a little bit weak.
So I've had to learn if I'm going to lift something, I've got to take really exaggerated good form. Like I've got to sometimes got to put a belt on and tighten it up really. I might have to get some help to come lift it up. And we've just we've got a little bit of a weak lower back when it comes to the wrath of God as an essential aspect of his divine character. So, we got to slow down.
We're going to take some good form. We're going to get some support here. And we're going to look at this. And my hope in looking at this in 1st Samuel 15 today is this. That we would see God's wrath, this essential aspect of his character, in a new and better way.
that we wouldn't run away from it, but we lean into it. So, let me pray for us, then we'll walk through this together. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would give us ears to hear. Lord, culturally, we we we don't love this subject that we would, if it was in our own choosing, we'd avoid it. We just pick the parts of 1 Samuel that we enjoy more to focus on.
But we know that your word is good. that every single letter is inspired and that it helps us see more of who you are. And that's what we want, Lord. We want to see more of your greatness. So, open our eyes and give us hearts to receive in Jesus name.
Amen. All right. Start over in verse one. And Samuel said to Saul, "The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel. Now therefore, listen to the words of the Lord, which is Samuel reminding Saul, I am a prophet, and I have a message to you from the Lord.
Verse two, thus says the Lord of hosts. I have noted what Amalecch did to Israel and opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalecch and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey and we'll stop there. Now, if you've read the Bible before, maybe you were with us in the book of Exodus few years ago, come across passages where God takes the Egyptian army and casts them into the Red Sea, kills the whole army.
It's like, oo, that's a lot. That's a lot of death. It's a lot of destruction. But those are that's an army that God defeated. And we can rationalize a bit in our minds, but yeah, I can understand that.
But when you read, "Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant." I mean, there is something in us that says, "What? Did God just tell the Israelites to kill babies?" And there's a part of us that that pauses and says, "What's what's happening here?" I became a Christian in the 2000s uh when Richard Dawkins was all the rage and his brand of atheism was making its way through. It's died down a bunch since then, but I heard when I became a Christian, I started talking about Jesus, I came across people that had that brand of atheism that say, "Do do you do you read your Bible? Do you know that your God is a genocidal maniac?
Have you read these stories where he tells them to genocide whole people and babies?" And I'd hear those arguments and I'll be like, "Oh, well, I have to read this." And it was tough to grapple with. Now you may not be as cynical as that crowd because that brand of belief is quite cynical. But there is something in us that looks at this and goes, "Goodness, how how awful would it have been to receive that command and have to go in and out of homes looking for women and children?" And you may think, how is that in the Bible? And really the core of that issue is how can God be good and command something like this?
That's the heart of that question. So what I want to do is I'm going to we're going to work through not the entirety of 1st Samuel 15. I want to get a gist of this story and I want to come back and I want to interact with that idea. So let's keep working through this so we can get a gist of what the story what's happening here.
Verse four. So Saul summoned the people and numbered them in Tam 200,000 men on foot and 10,000 men of Judah. And Saul came to the city of Amalecch and lay and wait in the valley. Then Saul said to the Kennites, "Go depart, go down from among the Amalachites, lest I destroy you with them. For you showed kindness to all the people of Israel when they came up out of Egypt." So the Kennites departed from among the Amalachites, which for a moment, let's just understand who the Kennites are.
The Kennites are not the Amalachites. This is actually where the uh uh Jethro, Moses's father-in-law, this was his people, part of the Minionites. God doesn't have judgment for the Kennites. So somehow either the tribal leader comes out to them or they send someone in hooded to sneak into the city and talk to the tribal leader. They says, "You need to get all of your people out of here because destruction is coming upon the Amalachites." It's the the Kennites leave.
It's just the Amalachites. Verse 7. And Saul defeated the Amalachites from Havala as far as which is east of Egypt. So they defeat them and the battle as they retreat would have extended even further as they're running away as far east of Egypt. Verse eight.
And he took Aag, the king of the Amalachites, alive, and devoted to destruction all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Aag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen, of the fattened calves, and and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless, they devoted to destruction. So, this is where we're going to spend a lot of our time in next week.
Saul receives this command, disobys this command. He kills lots, women, children, but leaves their evil king, Agag, and the best of their livestock. And next week, we're going to focus on what's happening there. What why did he do this?
And and all the things that follow out of that with Samuel, the prophet, coming to confront him in his disobedience. But eventually when you skip down to verse 32, Samuel is the one who ends up finishing the job. He's the one who fulfills the Lord's command. Verse 32 at the end of this chapter. Then Samuel said, "Bring here to me Aag, the king of the Amalachites." And Aag came to him cheerfully.
Aag said, "Surely the bitterness of death has passed." And Samuel said, "As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women." And Samuel hacked Aag to pieces before the Lord and Gilgal. So he finishes the job and he hacks Aag to pieces. And while indeed there are bigger things in this story than this, there's a bigger main point of what's happening here. I don't think that many of us with our cultural ears hear anything past the killing of children and then ending in the hacking the pieces of their king. Buzzers go off and we're just we we there's something within us that just ah this is hard for us to for our soul to do the heavy lifting of grappling with God's wrath being poured out like this.
So, what do we do with this? What do you do with a story like this? Because many, I'll be honest, have read this and reacted and said, "I I could never worship a God that would condemn the killing of children like this." People have reacted and said, "A good and loving God would never tell his people to do this, to kill an entire another people." And what I would say is that that gut reaction is like jumping into one episode, part of one episode of an entire series and then making a judgment call on the entire series itself. So if you have a if you're at a workplace and your friends are all talking about this television show, you got to watch this show. It's great.
and you say, "All right, I'm going to do it." And you go home and you pull it up and you say, "You know what? I'm gonna go to season 4, episode three." And then you just skip 30 minutes in. And then you watched five minutes and said, "It's not for me." Get back to work the next day. They said, "Did you watch it?" I did. I didn't like it.
Word. You didn't like it. What? What?
I mean, I know the first episode's a little slow. They're developing plot lines, but like I mean, but but by the end of the first episode, I mean, you That's It was good, right? Oh, no. No, no, no. I I I started in season 4.
What? Yeah. Actually, not season four, like episode three. Like I chose like the 30 minute mark and I just didn't like it. Everyone would look at you and say, "I I don't think you understand the story.
You You jumped into this. You don't understand what's actually happening here." So I would say I I don't think we should draw conclusions about the character of God without understanding this story in light of the greater context of God's wrath towards sin. So what I want to do with our time today is I want to take a step back and I want to provide some context to how to understand this story that so visibly displays the wrath of God in light of God's wrath throughout the Scriptures. And we're going to do that. You got to start at the beginning.
You start in Genesis. God makes Adam and Eve and everything is good. Everything is good. It's the way it's supposed to be. But Adam and Eve, when tempted and lured by uh their own desires and tempted by the enemy, they decide to reject God's commands and reject his his goodness that he's offering to them to seek their own version of goodness, what they think is ultimately good.
And when they do this, they bring sin into the world. And sin is like a cancer that infects and invades and destroys and corrupts. And if you've ever walked with someone you love that has cancer and seen what that disease does to them, you hate you hate cancer. There's a whole festivals and movements devoted to the hatred of cancer. And and sin is like a cancer that it it it corrupts and it destroys relationships and it destroys people.
But it's not just like a cancer and that it's a disease in itself. It's actually something bigger than that. Because sin is not just this impersonal force that weaves its way in and out of people. That sin is actually personified. It's embodied by people who are sinners that make valitional choices of their own decisions to disobey God and his commands in favor of what ultimately we want.
So we don't just have sin within us. We are sinners and it's important to understand that and honestly I think we we get that right. I I think that if if someone murdered your child, you would not think of the situation and that person as this murderous instinct within them that was responsible for the death of your child, for the murder of your child. We don't think about sin that way. You wouldn't go to the judge and say, "Have mercy on them.
Courts have mercy on them." Because it was actually the murderous instinct within them. No, we think how it is their murder. And you'd feel wrath towards that murder. It's not an impersonal force within us. We as sinners make an embodied choices to disobey the Lord.
And sin is also in and works through people. And God has wrath not just towards sin but towards sinners. towards us when we consistently and persistently reject him in favor of what we want. And some will look at that and say, "Okay, but if God is so big, like he he's he's a God of love, like why why can't he just overlook this?
Why why does he need to be filled with wrath?" As if love is the opposite of wrath. It's not. I love what the author Becky or Becky Becky Pippert says. She says, "Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers?" Far from it.
Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is. And the final form of hate is indifference. God's wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer, which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being. God does not look upon sin with indifference.
He loves his imagebearing creation that he made in his image. When we consistently and persistently reject him and pursue our own desires that further corrupts his creation, the holy love that he has for his creation necessitates a holy hatred of evil. And sinners like you and me make deliberate and repetitive choices every day to reject God's good desire for our lives in favor of what we ultimately think is good. And that's what Adam and Eve did. And that is what continues to happen.
I mean, it spirals out of control quickly. You keep continue to read in Genesis. All of a sudden, their son Cain murders his brother Abel. And then we get this this picture of creation continues to spiral out of control. So much so that by the time Genesis 6 comes around, this is how God describes creation.
And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on earth. And it grieved him to his heart. So that the Lord said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals, and creeping things, and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them." that every thought and intention of the heart sin had made its corruption so deep that God was sorry that he made humanity. But he sees Noah.
We if you're familiar with this story and he preserves Noah and his family and a selection of animals and preserves them as he floods the earth with wrath and with rain and he kills the rest of humanity. And yeah, people I mean people will they'll struggle with the flood stories as well. That's a hard story to grapple with. I think it's a little bit I think we're honest. I think that 1st Samuel 15 people struggle with this story more than the flood narrative.
I heard one commentator who was a little snarky who said that, you know, the flood narrative gets, you know, plush toys and animated picture and and and and all types of really cute things that sanitize it. And you don't see that ever with 1st Samuel 15. And it's like I I see your point. But there's something in us that struggles with this. But I want to help us see that God has divine right to bring judgment on the very creation that he made.
He made us. He's sovereign and he has rights over us. Y'all, we get mad when your pet, your dog or your cat destroys your house when you're away at work. You come home and you see that your dog has wrecked your house. Our our dog recently defecated on every rug in our house.
Everyone, every single one she could just ruined every rug. Not the hardwood floors that would have been easy clean up. No. Chose every rug upstairs and downstairs that she could get a hold of. And you get angry when that happens.
And guess what? You didn't make that animal. You bought that animal. Whether it was an adoption fee that you felt good about yourself or you went to a breeder like you did not make that animal. You did not form that animal in your image.
But God made us. He made us. He forms us in the womb. He makes us in our image. and he sustains every heartbeat and every breath is by his providential hand.
So he absolutely has rights over his creation that he made and we need to see that. We need to see how God responds to creation, how it is just. Now, after Noah gets off the ark, sin still corrupts. You follow that thread all the way to Genesis 15. But alongside of the corruption that's happening in the earth, God is working together a plan of redemption and salvation.
So, he chooses a man to bring about a people whom he will bring redemption through, and that is Abraham. And he tells Abraham that through him he's going to bless the nations that ultimately as we look at this and the grand picture of the Gospel this is God's redemptive plan through a people through Abraham and he places them in a promised land. He says I'm going to put you in a promised land. But I want us to help us see how even the Lord speaks about the promised land centuries before he puts Abraham and his Israelite people in it. And talking to Abraham, he says, "And they shall come back here." Here he's talking about his lineage, his the his people in the fourth generation.
For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Now that right there, the iniquity of the Amorites, the Amorites are one of the people groups that are in the promised land. What that is a picture of is that the evil of the people in the promised land is being stored up and being seen and remembered over time. And when you read the Old Testament law, you see how wicked the people of the promised land were. This is a people that would sacrifice their own children to foreign gods, that would uh engage in all types of abominable practices.
And God says the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. They are storing up judgment for themselves. Pull that thread further and then you get to the book of Exodus. The people of God are have been saved and brought out of Egypt. They're sojourning and wandering in the wilderness.
And one of the people in and around the promised land hears about the Israelites nearby. And they're the Amalachites. And the Amalachites come out to destroy the Israelites in Exodus chapter 17. That's what first that's what Saul uh Samuel was referencing at the beginning of 1st Samuel 15 when he says they came out when you were coming out of Egypt. It's this story right here.
I just want to read a few parts of it. In Exodus 17, it says, "Then Amalecch came and fought with Israel at Refidum." So this is they they come out, they wage war, they have this battle. This is the battle if you if you remember the book of Exodus where Moses has to keep his hands up the whole time. If they fall down, they're they're losing. He keeps them up, they're winning, and they end up winning the battle.
But then God hints at that he is going to finish the war. And then verse 14 it says, 'Then the Lord said to Moses, write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalecch from under heaven. And God decides right then and there that they they will get judgment for coming out to to defy me and destroy my people. They will get judgment. This is further reiterated in the book of Deuteronomy when Moses is reading the second reading of the law before they enter into the promised land.
Deuteronomy chapter 25 again says, "Remember what Amalecch did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary and cut off your tail who were lagging behind you and he did not fear God. Therefore, when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you, and the land of the Lord God is giving you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalecch from under heaven. You shall not forget." And we get further imagery of the evil that they engaged in coming to take out the Israelites. And God says, "You will blot them out." And then if you read the book of Deuteronomy, I think the clarification is also helpful because you might get the impression that okay, they're it's just this group is wicked and the people of God are really good.
If you actually read uh the story, the people of God, they failed. They're sinners, too. But there's a wickedness in the land that has to be judged. So much so that in Deuteronomy chapter 9, he tells his people, "Do not say in your heart after the Lord, your God has thrust them out before you. It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in the into possess the land.
Whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. But they have continuously rebelled against God and rejected him and engaged in all types of sinful ways. And the same wrath that was poured out in the floodwaters in Genesis is now going to be poured out through his people. And then we get to fast forward to our story today and we read that they defeat the Amalachites. Now I think the most precise way to understand what this defeat is is that this is national destruction.
This is the destruction of the Amalachite nation in a way that they will no longer threaten the people of God as a nation again. God raises up nations and he takes them down. And I think that's the most precise way to think about this because the Amalachites are actually not completely annihilated. I mean, you keep reading. We're going to see this in 1st Samuel chapter 30, but when you get to chapter 30, show back up when it says, "Now when David and his men came to Ziglag on the third day, the Amalachites had made a raid against the Ngev and against Ziglag." So we see that the these people in some form actually do exist, but they do not exist in this national threat that they once were.
They will no longer threaten the people of God like they once did. They will be destroyed. And I also want to help us see the Amalachites and and how the the worthy of judgment and how much they opposed and hated the people of God. So much so that if you keep following the thread of the New Testament, you get the book of Esther, which is in the middle of the Old Testament, but it's actually uh the period is actually the very end of the writings of the of the Old Testament. If you get all the way to the book of Esther, you see a descendant of Aag, an Amalachite, who still wants to exterminate the people of God.
When you get to the book of Esther, chapter 3, it says, "After these things, King Hasseras promoted Hmon, the Hmon, the Agagite." That's a descendant of Aag, the very king, the Amlite king that was hacked to pieces by Samuel. But some of Heamadathan advanced him and set him on the throne above all the officials who were with him. And it goes on to say in verse six, Hmon sought to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mori throughout the whole kingdom of Heserus. So there's this instinct to want to destroy the people of God even still. This is why if you if you read some of the writings and hear some of the things that were said by the Jews in the Holocaust, why they called the Nazis Amalachites.
This is a people that wanted to destroy them. This is very much a kill or be killed situation with the Amalachite nation. And God when his people are threatened and he is defied like this he has divine right to bring a nation down. Job 12 says he makes nations great and he destroys them. He enlarges nations and leads them away.
Our God, the sovereign ruler over all things, is within his divine prerogative and rights to bring a nation low. Now, I hope hopefully that gives us some context for what's happening here in 1st Samuel 15. And yet still, I think there is something within us that struggles with this. And what I want to push on a bit is that that struggle actually I think is more of a cultural one because I'll be honest there are many cultures outside of the west outside of America that struggle with different parts of the Bible. They actually don't struggle as much with this.
They don't struggle with God bringing wrath on a people and bringing judgment on them. the other cultures that have a higher view for the justice of God that there other cultures that have endured all s types of injustice where they they can't they they don't want to think of a God as good if he's indifferent towards evil. Other cultures have endured true injustice in ways that we are insulated from that they long for a God to bring justice. They long for a God to pour out wrath. They don't want to worship a God who's indifferent towards evil.
But that's not a high value for us. And what happens is is that in the west you stumble upon stories like this and then we make the judgment, no, this is not a good God. I love what Tim Keller says in Reasons for God when he's talking about the wrath of God. He says, "Why should Western cultural sensibilities be the final court in which to judge whether Christianity is valid?" And it's like we we don't have the final say. We're pretty star spangled awesome, but we don't have the final say and who God is and his character and if it's good or not.
So, some don't like this. Others have tried to distance themselves from this. They try to distance Christianity from this. You'll hear the argument, okay, yeah, but that's the Old Testament God, but the New Testament God is way different.
Like when Jesus comes and like he's holding children and he's teaching, he's a sage. Like this is way different. And that's like two things. First, I don't think you've read this Jesus. I don't think you've read this New Testament.
Get to that in a moment. Second, that's not a new new teaching at all. It's called Marcianism. That's a heresy from the third century. So that's been around a long time.
this idea of that the Old Testament God is completely different from the New Testament God. But back to my first point, I don't think that you've actually read the words of Jesus. Because if you think that this form of wrath that we see in 1 Samuel 15 is categorically different than the wrath that it shows up in the New Testament, well, in some ways I might agree with you because what Jesus talks about, I think I would argue is probably way worse because Jesus still takes seriously sin and how it incurs wrath. He says in Matthew 10, he says, "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
And as Jesus is developing this doctrine of hell for us to understand eternal punishment, he says in Mark chapter 9, "And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. for everyone will be salted with fire. That's the language of the New Testament. And I would argue that's a far worse judgment that was poured out on the Amalachites.
I would argue that if you accept the reality of hell, which we do, the judgment of the Amalachites is benign by comparison. So we see from all the new the whole Bible that God has wrath towards sin and sinners and we deserve it. We deserve wrath. And and here's the deal. I I think even Westerners like us.
I think we even are on board with that idea to an extent. Like I think we we get that. But I think the difference is is we want to be the ones who dictate what is worthy of wrath and what isn't. I mean, because the moment that we read a story of of of someone who murdered a child, it's like, let him burn. The moment that you read a story like Birdie Maidoff, who swindled people out of billions of dollars and ruined so many people's lives, it's like, oh, there's a special place for him there.
And so, I think even part of us agrees, yes, some people deserve wrath, but we are the ones who want to dictate who deserves wrath. So I think we feel this but we are creatures. We are creation and creatures do not dictate what is worthy of justice. A holy God does. The creator God does.
So when God sees the evil of the Amalachites over generations and decides as a judge that he's going to destroy this nation and their reign of terror, he is right in doing so. And it vividly ends back in 1533. And Samuel said, "As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women, highlighting all the evil of Aag." And Samuel hacked AAG to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. Our God does not let the guilty go unpunished. Wrath is a part of the character of God.
God cannot be good if he does not have wrath towards evil. God cannot be good if he does not have wrath towards injustice. God cannot be good if he does not oppose evil. That's all over the Scriptures. The Old Testament, one of the the the best summaries of God's character shows up in Exodus chapter 34 when God is giving Moses the Ten Commandments.
And God describes himself in a description that gets repeated throughout the whole rest of the Old Testament. And I think it's a wonderful summary of the character of who our God is. He says, this is the Lord speaking audibly. The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. that God was slow to anger with the Amalachites from generation to generation and then he brings judgment because God will by no means clear the guilty.
Aag could not flagrantly and repeatedly defy God without judgment. And Aag stood in judgment as he was hacked and pierced to death. And if that causes us to be fearful of God, Amen. we should we we're commanded to we should fear the power and the might of God. But our God also is abounding in steadfast love because we like AAG flagrantly and repeatedly defy God's will.
We boastfully defy and disobey his commands. We celebrate how we listen to the commands of God and do the exact opposite. And the good news of the Gospel is that we get an offer of escape from the wrath of God. That God does not make us stand in our judgment like AAG if we don't want to. We get a substitute.
The prophet Isaiah looking forward to Jesus says this. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds we are healed.
Jesus comes to stand in the place of the wrath of God the father. And Jesus comes to take the hacking that Aag received, the destruction of his flesh. Our God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And the most abounding example of the steadfast love is of God is Jesus coming and standing in our place and the wrath of God being directed back at himself as he's hacked to death. The good news of the Gospel is that we do get a substitute for the wrath.
And my hope is that as we consider how difficult some of these stories are to receive, we contextualize it and bring it into the greater story of God's wrath. And we remember, praise God, I deserve wrath, but Jesus stands in my place. And then we worship Christ alone. The band's going to come up and we're going to worship. And Christ alone is a song we'll sing.
And I love one of the verses. It says, "Till on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied." That as Christians, we accept the whole council of God's word. And we don't run away from the wrath of God, but we celebrate that we know where that wrath was ultimately and most gloriously displayed. It was at the cross. And my hope is two things.
that a that if you don't belong to God, if you've not laid down your life, if you not I mean that the testimony we heard from Marion earlier of deciding I want I want to be a Christian. I want to be allin with Christ. I want you to see that the vivid display of God's wrath that was we saw in in 1 Samuel that Jesus hints about that that teaches about later that that wrath will fall out on us if we stand in our own sin. But the good news of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ comes to stand in the gap. And my hope is that you would believe and that you'd put your full hope and faith in Christ as your substitute.
My other hope is this for us as Christians reading this story. I think there are times where we so seeing and celebrate the goodness of the Gospel and how he paid for sins that sometimes we forget what sin costs and how destructive the force of sin is in our lives. My hope is is that we sing and worship in this song that we'd consider our own sin that that earned judgment that Jesus paid for with his precious blood and we who are living in sin would say I don't want that anymore. this would this would energize us towards repentance. And in our groups this week, we'd look at our sin and just say, "Oh, I don't I don't want to sin anymore.
I know I've incurred wrath." And that would lead us to Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, I pray you've given us hearts to hear your difficult word. God, I pray that you would give us faith. You'd give us obedience. You'd call us into repentance.
by not running from your wrath, but leaning into it and celebrating and worshiping you as a fearsome, holy, wonderful, loving God. But we need your work in our hearts to see this with clear eyes. So Lord, go to work in Jesus name. Amen.