The King Who Feared People More Than God - Chronicles Of The King (Week 1)

What happens when the approval of people matters more than obedience to God? When fear becomes our guide, compromise is never far behind.

In Week 1 of Chronicles of the Kings, we look at the life of Saul, Israel's first king. His story reveals how insecurity, the fear of man, and the desire to preserve his own image led him away from God's will. Watch as Pastor Obed takes us through Week 1 of Chronicles of the Kings and discover why obedience to God will always matter more than the approval of people.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, church family. So excited that you're here today. And uh we are kicking off that brand new series, their summer series, Chronicles of the Kings, today. And so if you have your Bibles, turn them to 1 Samuel 15. 1 Samuel 15. If you don't, it's gonna be on the screen here in a moment, so no worries. Um, but we are kicking off this new series and we're gonna be through it most of the summer. And one of the best ways to engage is to make sure that you have one of these. Our study guides, Chronicles of the Kings study guide, it has a reading plan in there, and it's a way that we're going to stay engaged with God's word this summer, and we're gonna keep um pursuing the Lord together and doing that together, and then uh as we read in the scriptures, that'll uh culminate in hearing about the kings on Sunday morning, and it's gonna be a lot of fun. So wherever you go, on vacation or wherever the summer takes you, you can just make sure you have this in your luggage and you will be good. So Chronicles of the King is gonna have a lot of fun. We're kicking off with Saul today. He is the first human king of Israel, and uh Saul really is a tragic figure. The people, they uh before there was kings, uh, there were judges, and uh there was a prophet, and his name was Samuel, and he judged the people. Uh, but the people weren't satisfied with that setup. They wanted a king just like all the other nations to go out and to fight their battles for them and to win battles for them and to protect them. And never mind that all throughout the story thus far, God has been the one who's been fighting their battles, and he's been the one who's been winning things for them, and he's been the he's like, hey, you guys should be different than all the other nations. They said, no, thanks to all that, and they said, give us a human king. We want that, make it make sure he's really strong. And so uh Samuel at first is like that's a no-go, the prophet Samuel, but then God he says, Samuel, listen to the people and give them what they want. Because they haven't just rejected you, they've rejected me as their king. And so God directs Samuel to go and to to find the king that he's already chosen. And this guy's name is Saul. And Saul is tall, dark, and handsome, just like David Oakstart over there, just a tall, dark, handsome guy. Um, but unlike David, he saw had some internal flaws. Um, and these internal flaws, they would reveal themselves. And in as Saul tried to be the king that God wanted him to be, and he, because of his decisions, he would end up losing the kingdom. And the passage that we're about to read today is a big reason why. We're gonna be in 1 Samuel 15. We're gonna read uh large portions of scripture today, but we're gonna start with just three verses. And so let's stand as we together, um, would you stand with me as we read the word of the Lord and honor him this morning? 1 Samuel 15, starting in verse 22. And Samuel said, Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you, Saul, have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king. Saul said to Samuel, I've sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Did you know that 75%, the study has been done, 75% of people are uncomfortable with silence. Like it makes us have to react. We have to like fill the void even with you know some kind of noise. It's just something that most of us have all, and likely all of us have experienced. Just this being uncomfortable with silence and with the quiet. And I'm uh, you know, I gotta confess, I'm not very good at this because you know, you turn on your car, your maybe your car does this to you, too. You turn on the car and your phone automatically connects to the car, and what happens? It just picks up on the podcast that you were listening to, and it just fills all the your drive with the your podcast, your music, whatever, the radio. And it's just we live in a world that just has a lot of noise. In a world with a lot of noise, and the noise just comes out automatically, and sometimes we don't even think about it. We get home, we turn on the TV to fill the space. We're uncomfortable with the quiet. And I know this happens to me, and I'm sure it's happened to you, where part of the reason that we're uncomfortable with the silence is because our minds start racing. Our minds start going, and we start thinking about things that we would rather not think about. And we start feeling things that we would rather not feel. We start thinking about these situations with people, and man, it starts to make us feel worried, or we start thinking about all the problems that we gotta deal with, and it starts to rise up some anxiety on the inside of us. And the truth is, is that that's because who has your ear reveals who and what you fear. Who has your ear reveals who and what you fear. I was having a conversation with my friend uh Jay Tom, that was really like the inspiration for this truth. And this truth is true, is true of me, it's true of us, and it's definitely true of Saul. And what we're gonna see as we dive into chapter 15 is that this is really just reveals what is going on in Saul's life and why he ends up losing the kingdom and why God rejects him as king. And what we see first in verses 9 through 11 is Saul did not listen to God. He did not listen to God. It says, But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and the fat and calves and the lambs and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless, they devoted to destruction. The word of the Lord came to Samuel. God speaking, I regret that I am sad, of sorrow, that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. And Samuel was angry and he cried to the Lord all night. See, in this, for some context, in this story, God had called Saul in his kingly role, in his function as a uh as a king, to go and to fight a battle. To specifically fight a battle against the Amalekites. And uh Kelby just reminded me in uh she was here service hosting. Um, there's this new mood uh animated movie called the David movie. Have y'all seen that movie? If you have little kids, you might have seen David. And you know the Amalekites in that movie, man, they are like scary and evil and bad. And in the Bible, it uh it tells us that they were really bad and they did some things that were really dishonoring of God. And so God, in this moment, he's acting as the judge, and he wants to bring judgment on the Amalekites for their sin. And so he uh wants to work through Saul just as a vessel, as his king, to work through Saul and through the army to bring about destruction of the Amalekites and to not take any of their stuff. To us as modern readers and modern listeners, that just kind of sounds strange. And we're gonna be in the Old Testament, you know, that's why be here, listen to these messages on Sunday morning, stay tuned in so we can start explaining some of the strange stuff. This sounds strange to us. And I I want to read something that helps us to understand what's going on here. One of the top scholars on 1 Samuel, she uh Joyce Baldwin, she says that here God wants them to engage in a holy war. Something set apart, right? The word holy means set apart. He wants Saul to go and to carry out God's judgment on his behalf. The victory is the Lord's, so there is no material advantage for the army. All the spoils of war belong to the Lord and are therefore holy and set apart. And you can just imagine being in Saul's army and hearing this, like, hey, we're gonna go fight the Amalekites, and you might die. And uh guess what? We're not gonna take anything from them. There's gonna be no spoils, you're not getting paid for this, uh, so let's go. You can just imagine, like in that in their in their camp, those guys are whispering to each other, talking to each other like, hey, this is a bad deal. How is Saul gonna call us out to go do something that God wants us to do? And we get nothing out of it except just doing what God wants? That's not a good deal, Saul. And you can imagine Saul hearing these things and thinking and listening to the people. Man, I'm I might lose these guys if I don't give them what they want. Saul doesn't listen to God, he lets the people take of the best. Yeah, they do they do devote some things to destruction, but then he lets them take of the best of the oxen and the and the cattle and all the spoils of war. And on the surface, this may just seem like a simple failure to listen on Saul's part, but as we'll find out next week, that God goes beyond the surface and he looks at the heart. And what is happening underneath the surface in Saul's heart is that he's turned his back on God. He's rejected God, that he stopped following him. And it's because relationship breaks down before rebellion breaks out. Saul's relationship with God was breaking down well before he made the choice to listen, to not listen to God, and to listen to the people. Because who has your ear reveals who and what you fear. Saul did not listen to God, and Saul did listen to the people. And we see this in verse 12. And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning, and it was told Saul, Saul came to Carmel, or told Samuel, and reported to Samuel, that Saul came to Carmel. And behold, Saul has set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal. And so Samuel comes to Saul, and Saul says to him, Blessed be you to the Lord, I have performed the commandment of the Lord. And Samuel said, What then is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear? Saul said, They, the people, have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen. And they didn't just do it for themselves, Samuel, they actually did it to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we devoted to destruction. What we see here is that Saul, what does he do? He we the the battle's won. God, you know, presume God wins the battle for them. What does what does Saul do? He goes, he goes to a city and he sets up a monument to himself. And we actually have a picture of what this monument might have looked like. And this is one that was found from the same time uh in the ancient Near East. And this is uh what the kind of thing that Saul would have set up. He would have, and so just imagine the battle is over. What does Saul do? He immediately commissions a huge monument. He said, guys, this this battle was so great, and can you can you like wow, we I we really did this, and more importantly, I really did this. This is awesome. Let's you go ahead, take that big rock, make it a monument, and make sure you get all the details right. Make sure that you got all the Amalekites there on the bottom and they're all dead, and then me triumphant, winning, glorious on the top, and make sure I'm way bigger than all those other guys. And let's do it. What is Saul doing here? Saul has decided that he is going to take credit for the battle and the victory for himself and give none of it to God. And Saul he shows his hand here too. It's like, why would Saul do that? Well, it's right there. He's explaining, and he might be doing a little bit of blame shifting here, but he's explaining what the people have done that he let them do. And he says that they've done all of this to sacrifice to the Lord. Not my God, but your God. Somewhere along the way. God stopped being Samuel, or Saul's God. He was Samuel's God. He was no longer Saul's God. And we were in the passage you read at the beginning, Samuel points out that Saul's arrogance here, his presumption is like idolatry. And what does that mean? We don't often, right, idolatry is when they would make idols and that idol would represent the God. We don't often do that uh nowadays. If you do, um then I'm glad you're here at church. Um, but right, what we do nowadays instead is instead of making idols out of wood, is we create these mental images of who God is. And we, in these mental images of who God is, and we think, okay, that's God, and that's the God that I'm gonna worship, and that's the God that I'm gonna relate to. The problem is that so often our mental images of God are not who God truly is. God revealed Himself, Exodus 34, to be a God uh abounding in steadfast love and mercy, gracious and faithful to the thousands. And so there's this picture of God that we get throughout the scriptures, and that picture is no longer the picture that Saul has. To the point that Saul said, It's no longer, it's your God, not my God. I'm listening to the people. Because who has your ear reveals who and what you fear. Saul did not listen to God, Saul listened to the people, and Saul feared the people. And we see this in verse 16. Then Samuel, he's f Samuel's fed up with Saul, and he says, Stop, I will tell you what the Lord said to me this night. And Saul said to Samuel, speak. Samuel said, Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord himself chose you, anointed you king over Israel. And the Lord sent you on a mission and said, Go, devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed. Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord? And Saul said to Samuel, Samuel, you're not listening. I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag, the king of Amalek, which God specifically told him to not do that. I have done that, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction, but the people, they took the spoil. And it's like, well, what's going on here? But the people took the spoil, the sheep, the oxen, the best of the things, the devoted to destruction. Obviously, Saul wasn't listening. But it's clear that Saul feared the people more than he feared God. And it's clear that he wasn't listening. And it's kind of like that moment, you know, if you've uh are a parent uh that you've been especially this is happening to us, our kids are little, and um, one of our kids who I will not put on blast, you know, so they will remain nameless. Uh, they are, man, they just they they're really like, you know, I think a future leader. They think that their plans and their ideas are awesome, and that they're gonna be completely focused on their plans and their ideas. And uh, whatever dad says, it's gotta run through the filter of what's more important, what I'm doing, or what my dad wants me to do. And usually what dad wants me to do is not is a little farther down um than it should be. And so one time I asked them, hey, they were they were doing stuff, and I said, Hey, in a minute I'm gonna ask you to do something. All right, in the minute passed, hey, can you please stop what you're doing for a second and um help your mom out? And uh I asked, you know, told them what to do, and then I left and did something else, and then I come back. And then I asked them, hey, have you done the thing that I asked you to do? Knowing full well they had not. But I'm giving them a chance here. And so I asked, hey, would it okay, um, can you tell me what I asked you to do? Just repeat it back to me, your own words. Just let me know what I told you. Because I there seems to have been a com a miscommunication here. And just with all the confidence in the world, they tell me, uh, and they go on to explain what I asked them to do and how they you know fulfilled the task that I laid before them. And all the while I'm there realizing they did not listen at all. Because what they're saying is not there's a few things, but generally is really different than what I said. They didn't listen. And there was something in in in in their mind, in their heart, that was just way more important than listening to me. And there was something in Saul's heart and his mind that was way more important than listening to God, and it was this fear of the people and getting their admiration and their approval and making sure that they are behind him, and that and on all these things just showed that Saul cared way more about the people's allegiance than his own allegiance to God. And the sad thing is about Saul is that Saul he didn't necessarily start this way. Yeah, there were some things like he, you know, they they called him to be the king, and then instead of showing up, all yes, like I'm here, I'm here to serve the Lord. He's like hiding in the baggage. So there's uh there's some signs there, but God had chosen him. God had anointed him through the prophet Samuel. And then he himself anointed him, right? The the anointing of the Lord, which is like when you uh put oil um on somebody, it's like literally to smear with oil, it points forward to the reality of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit coming on us as his body, the church. And the Holy Spirit, it says in Samuel, rushed upon Saul and rushed upon him and gave him the strength to prophesy and to do all the kingly things he was supposed to do. And that's how Saul started, but that's not how Saul finished. And somewhere along the way, Saul stopped trusting in the Spirit of God and started relying on his own strength. Over a thousand years later, the apostle Paul would be writing a letter to a group of churches in Galatia, and he would be dealing with a very similar situation to a sol dealt with. And in this emotional part in Galatians 3, he's he's just he's he's so brokenhearted almost at how the Galatians have been foolish and have have started to drift away from the gospel. And he asks them, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Having started over here in God's grace, are you now trying to do it all in your own strength? Having started from a place of complete surrender and repentance and just knowing that it's all because of God, are you now trusting something else or someone else to come through? And it's a question we should be asking ourselves often is are there any areas in our own heart, in our lives, where we started by the Spirit, but somewhere along the way, things happen, maybe things happen to us, but we decided, okay, we're gonna stop solely relying on the Spirit, and we're going to start making this thing work out ourselves. And we're gonna start trusting some other people to do what we should have just trusted God alone to do. And along the way, we stopped listening. Because we surely stopped listening to God and the other people and the other things started to get our ear. And who has your ear reveals who and what you fear. Saul did not listen to God. Saul listened to the people, Saul feared the people, and ultimately all of this happened because Saul did not fear God. As in simply obeying the voice of the Lord. God doesn't want us to just come and He didn't want Saul to just come with these loveless sacrifices. He wanted Saul to come and to simply listen to his word. And Saul, you know, we we listen and we have the Bible, which is God's word, awesome. And then we have the Holy Spirit, and we have, you know, and then people help us to discern God's will. Saul literally had a prophet. He had a guy, just like, hey, I'm hearing directly from God. This is what the Lord is saying. And it wasn't enough. God just wanted Saul to come just come to him and to listen to him and to trust him. And yes, Saul, he seems like he had some insecurities at the beginning, but God chose him anyways. And he said, No, I'm gonna, if you listen to me, we're gonna deal with all that stuff and we're gonna keep this thing going. God, but Saul doesn't respond. God the Father just wants Saul to listen, to hear his heart, to know his heart, and to respond to that. God is a loving father. And like we've been singing, God is also holy. He is holy, he is completely different. It's kind of like the sun. If you get too close, watch out because you could get burned up. God is perfect and he's holy, and he can't bear to be in the presence of sin. And Isaiah, he has this vision. The prophet Isaiah, you go read it, Isaiah 6. Isaiah has this vision of just being in the temple of the Lord, being in his heavenly temple, in his throne room. And he is, he just responds and he says, Woe is me, because I am a man of unclean lips. He sees perfect light in front of him and it reveals the things about him where he is not honoring and holy like him. And he says, Woe is me, for I'm a man of unclean lips, and I live amongst the people of unclean lips. And then this ain't this uh angel comes and he the angels are singing, holy, holy, holy is God. God is holy, and he wanted Saul to be like him. Yeah, Saul is the human king, but he was just supposed to reflect the heavenly king. Saul was just God's vice regent for Israel, and he was to be a servant of the one true king. But Saul didn't listen. He gave his ear to the people. Saul stopped listening to God because Saul stopped fearing God. And fearing God, it's one of those ideas that can seem strange to us at first. But the Proverbs, if you read the Proverbs, they actually illuminate the wealth of riches that are in this idea of fearing God. Proverbs 15, 33 says, The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor. So, what is the fear of the Lord? It's it's a place and it's a motivation and a posture of your heart where you respond to God in fear and you receive wisdom. And you receive wisdom from him. And he shows you just, hey, this is not just what is right, but how to live in right relationships with me and with other people. And the key to the fear of the Lord is humility. And that's the exact same thing that Saul did not have. And because he didn't have humility, God couldn't honor Saul. Yes, Saul received the people's honor, but he missed out on pleasing God. The fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied. So there's this idea that the fear of the Lord, yeah, okay, let's say we live in reverent fear of God, and we understand who God is, that he's holy, and we we respond in awe and reverent fear to him. And when we there's this idea that when we have the fear of the Lord, we don't have to fear anything else. Like there's nothing else. Because if we know who God truly is, and we know that he is Almighty, and that he is the creator, and that everything that he purposes and everything that he speaks will come to pass. If we know all these things about God and we fear him, man, and we're his sons and daughters, we can rest satisfied in that. By steadfast love and faithfulness, iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord, one turns away from evil. Can you imagine being able to turn away from evil in your life? By fearing God. And the fear of man, it lays a snare and a trap. But whoever trusts in the Lord is safe. The fear of the Lord, trusting in the Lord, all of that is faith. Faith and faithfulness and devotion and allegiance to God. And yes, there are things that we can learn from Saul. There's things that we can learn from Saul's life, but it and it's it's tempting to just learn things, to just get lessons from Saul's life. It's tempting to just say, okay, Saul did this, I better not do that, and I'm good. If I just don't do the things that Saul did, and I try really hard to not do it, then I'm gonna be alright.

unknown 27:39

Right?

SPEAKER_00 27:41

And the problem is that it just doesn't work. The problem is we can't just try harder and harder and harder to not rebel. We can't try harder and harder and harder to open up our ears to listen to God. And even though, verse 24, which we read, right? Saul, there seems to be a glimmer of hope. Saul says, I've sinned. And you hope that this that he's just oh, okay, he's recognized his sin. He's he's gonna he's gonna start following God again. But you keep reading throughout the story, and it becomes clear that Saul concedes in his mind, but he doesn't confess from his heart. That yes, Saul responds to Samuel, but he does not repent to God. And he tries harder and harder the rest of his life. But one scholar, Leland Riken, he says that in Saul we find a portrait of one who puts throne and honor before God. And then his little spirals into a free fall of failure, jealousy, insanity, murder, foolhardiness, and self-destruction. And it's just true that relationship breaks down before rebellion breaks out, before Saul did all that stuff. His relationship with the Lord started breaking down because he stopped giving God his ear. And it happens to us too. But we don't, and we and we and we shouldn't, and if we keep trying, we're gonna get frustrated to try to build that relationship up and to bring that restoration that we know we need, and to and to make that redemption that we know we need happen, and to rescue ourselves from the the situations that and the things that that cause that worry and the anxiety in us, if we keep trying to do that in our own strength, it's not gonna work. And Saul's life is a testament to that. We, like the people of Israel, we do need a king. But we don't need a king like Saul, who just came with loveless sacrifices. We need a king who would listen to God. We would need a king who would fear God. We need a king who would lay it all out to obey God, and who would not just make sacrifices, but that would offer himself up as a perfect, holy, loving sacrifice that would become obedient to God and obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. A king who that by his steadfast love, by his covenant love, by his faithfulness, our sin and iniquity would be atoned for forever. We need King Jesus to come in and to come into our into our lives and to rescue us. We can't rescue ourselves. And that's how our lives started, right? Our lives started, and they started when we heard the good news about Jesus, and we realized, man, we are sinners. Maybe we're not as bad as the Amalekites, but man, we we're sinners. We have not loved God, we have chosen to worship other things, we have not loved people, we've hurt people, and we've made these decisions, and we need to be rescued. That same attitude, that same, that same mindset of repentance and faith is the one that will deal with the areas in our lives. Where it's hard to hear God right now, and where the fear of man and the fear of other things seems too big to overcome. And that's why it's so great. That's why we need to come to worship together because we sing these songs about the powerful name of Jesus, and we sing about how God in Jesus, because he paid for our sins on the cross and then was buried in the grave and was resurrected three days later, he has conquered sin, death in the grave. And we need that to fill us, to encourage us and to lift up our eyes above our situations, above our circumstances, and to fix our eyes on Jesus again and realize that the way we started is the way we're gonna keep going and it's the way that we're gonna finish. And it's all fearing the Lord and trusting him because he is good and he is great and he is holy. God wants to come in and bring rescue and reconciliation and redemption so that we can live lives where God has our ear whenever he wants it, and where every single day we get to hear the voice of the Lord speaking to us. And when we approach different situations like that, man, God can do anything. Because maybe, maybe you're dealing with a situation, right? You're dealing with a situation in a relationship, and you're in this relationship, and this relationship really matters to you, but it's actually gotten to the point where you're at there's a sense of fear that, man, what if I do something that makes me lose this relationship? What am I gonna do? Who am I if I don't have this relationship? And so and so God wants to bring, tries to bring you back to Him, but the focus of the fear has and it has your ear, and you start listening to the voice of the person or the own internal voice that says you have to do and sacrifice whatever it takes to make sure you keep this relationship. Nothing's gonna get you out of that except hearing the truth and turning to God and saying, God, rescue me from this, redeem me, reconcile me to you, and bring your heart and love into this relationship and do whatever you want to do. Even in our parenting, I want to be a good dad, and I want my kids to follow Jesus, and and you you want you want that so bad for your kids. And so what happens is in our flesh, there starts to be this fear that rises up on the inside of us. Like, man, what if I do something that messes my kids up? What if I do this? And you start you're starting, man, I gotta figure this thing out. So you're like going through Instagram, because that's the best place to find advice for all this stuff. And so you go through Instagram and you go on on and you go ask all your friends and your book club, like, what am I gonna do? And then, okay, I'm gonna do all those things because I cannot have I cannot lose these kids. I gotta make sure that they're good. I'm scared of them not following God. But that fear actually drives us to do things that are not good for them. God, please rescue me from this. Reconcile me to you. Help me to listen to what you have to say in your word and specifically about my kids so I can really love them. Maybe it's in a business, in business, right? You have this desire to build your business on biblical values, man. Yeah, other guys do things this way, but we're going to really try and honor God with our business and and do this thing right. And then you start thinking, well, that might make us a little more, a little less efficient and a little less effective. And then if we're a little less efficient and effective, then our clients might not like that. And then if our clients leave, then what are we gonna do? People stop paying us. This is difficult. And so you start looking up. Okay, I'm gonna start hearing all these other people, and I gotta start figuring this thing out on my own. And all the while, God's just no, just trust me. Listen to my word, listen to how I'm guiding you. It may not mean that you need to, you know, stop everything you're doing, but listen to what I am calling you to do. And let me be the provider, let me be the redeemer, let me bring restoration. Now, I was uh talking about uh, you know, listening to podcasts in the car. Um this past month and a half, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts because my and maybe some of your uh San Antonio Spurs are going to the NBA Finals. If you care about basketball, which I really do. And so we actually really had a chance, right? At the beginning, we looked pretty good. So I was locked in this whole playoff so far. Uh final start on Wednesday, and so it's been a month and a half, and I've been locked in. And every every time I get in the car, that same podcast comes up, and these podcasts are like two or three hours, so they you can listen to that all day. Um, and which by and large, Monday through Thursday, I was listening to a lot of podcasts. And uh then one night uh we lost one of the games, and then I was just really upset about it. I was probably way too upset than I should have been, you know, and should have trusted they would come through, right? No. Uh and then the next day, I was gonna I was gonna put on the same podcast, and God just stops me. He gets my attention, he says, You've been listening to a whole lot of other things. And you've started being a little scared. But that's not what I have for you. And that's not what he has for us. And in the summer, yeah, it can you know, it kind of can get crazy in the summer, it can be easy to, you know, take it to just kind of coast. But I'm so excited about our series that we're in in Chronicles of the Kings, because it's an opportunity to give God our ear this summer, and to simply listen to him. And so, what I want to challenge you today is when you grab your devotional tomorrow and you go to week two, we're gonna be in week two, day one, you read 1 Samuel 16, is right after, it's not the instructions not there, but right after you read that passage is to just stop. And you put a timer on your phone, 60 seconds, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, it'll eventually not be enough time. And you just be silent and quiet before the Lord and see what he has to say to you. You've already read his word, and now he wants to speak to you from his word and help you apply that to your life and to fill you up with his presence and with his voice, and from there we can respond when God has our ear. Because he's the only one that we fear. And so, what I want to do in this moment is just to give you some time to just put that into practice and to uh take. I'm gonna watch the clock. I won't tell you how long because then you could count the seconds. I'm gonna watch the clock and give you a moment, even as we've heard God's word, to simply allow God to speak to you for us to give him, give him our ear. So you bow your heads, close your eyes. Together in this place, Holy Spirit, we thank you that because of your grace, because of King Jesus and who he is and what he did on the cross, we can approach the throne of grace and sit at your feet and give you our ears. So speak to your people today, God. God, we're thankful for your word. Thankful for your presence, and we ask that you would simply help us. We can't do it on our own. We need you, and we want you. Would you help us, Lord, to, as we sang about, live a life that in everything you get all the glory, God. We pray this all in Jesus' name. Everyone's