This
little rubber band has potential. It
really does. In fact, when I stretch it,
it is the very definition of "potential energy". When I stretch this rubber band it has the
potential to do all kinds of things. It
has the potential to fly across the room.
It has the potential to go really fast and to cause you pain, especially
if you are on the front row. When I pull
it back, you respect it because you know what it can do. But now, when I stop stretching it, it has no
potential. It is worthless. It's just taking up space with no redeeming
qualities.
All
it can do now is go back to my desk drawer and tell all the other rubber bands
about the good old days when it almost flew across the room. It almost did this and did that. It had great potential there for a while. But now it's just pretty pathetic.
Does
that sound like anybody you know? We
probably have all known someone who failed to live up to their potential;
someone who had everything going for them but squandered an opportunity to use
it. "Potential" is a word you
will hear often on Sunday afternoon during the early part of football season. All the young guys are described as having
potential and when somebody has potential on the football field, it is obvious
to anyone with an experienced eye.
The
coaches see it. The other players see it
and even the opposing scouts see it and do their best to plan to do whatever
they can to minimize that potential.
It's the same way in our spiritual lives. We have often talked about this life being a
battle. There are dozens of passages in
the Bible that refer to this life as a battle or a war and we are given
everything we need to survive and thrive in this battle if we just use what is
given to us and live our lives to our full potential.
And
we all have great potential to do great things to further the Kingdom of
God. We are all given gifts and talents
by God that will allow us to do great things that will make the name of Jesus
famous. And when we have those gifts we
are commanded to use them. If you can
sing, sing. If you can teach,
teach. If you can clean, organize,
prepare, witness, pray, give wise council, whatever you can do, we are told to
use that gift to the glory of God.
But
I have to warn you: The potential in
that gift is seen by all who have an experienced eye, including Satan, and like
an opposing scout, he is doing his best to minimize your potential. We are told in I Peter 5:8 that he is a
roaring lion looking to devour us and if he can't kill us, he at least wants to
keep us from living up to our potential.
If at the end of your life all that can be said is, "He had
potential", then Satan says that's one for the win column, baby!
There
was a young man in the Old Testament who had great potential. He had it all, in fact. He was tall, good-looking, smart, and strong
with an humble personality and a noble character; a lot like me in so many
ways. But unlike me, he was chosen to be
the first king of Israel. And when God
told Samuel to anoint Saul, Samuel said that there was no one like him among
all the people. Later it says that the
Spirit of God dwelled inside Saul.
Now
that's potential! This was before
Pentacost in the New Testament where the Holy Spirit came on everyone who
believed and remained there. In the Old
Testament the Spirit would come into some people and not into others and could
leave at any time. But Saul had the
Spirit of the Living God living inside of him and so his potential just
skyrocketed.
Can
you imagine what Satan felt as he looked at Saul? Satan is a good judge of potential. He is a great scout for the opposite
team. He knows what to look for and I
think when he saw Saul he must have been a little nervous. He wasn’t nervous when he saw that Saul was
head and shoulders taller than everybody else.
He wasn’t intimidated by Saul’s good looks. Satan didn’t much care about Saul’s bloodline
or ancestry or what he had done in the past.
Satan saw that Saul had the Holy Spirit living inside of him and was
very concerned about what Saul might do in the future to further the Kingdom of
God.
Unfortunately
Satan is a good judge of character and when he sees somebody with that kind of
potential he goes to his tried and true playbook and pulls out some trick plays
that work all too often. I want to look
at 3 things that Satan does to minimize Saul’s potential and I hope we will be
able to recognize these plays in our own life so we don’t wind up like Saul,
with an empty life that once had so much potential.
Judy
kids with me that I always have 3 points in my sermons so that everyone will
know it’s a good sermon because everybody knows you need 3 points to have a
good sermon. Well I tried this week to
find either 2 or 4 things about Saul just to be different but God showed me 3
so I’m going with that.
We
will look at 3 different passages in 3 different chapters of the book of I
Samuel. I changed it after the bulletins
were printed so don’t try to follow that necessarily. First let me tell you what Satan wants us to
do or to be and then we will see what the Bible says about these things in the
life of Saul.
When
these 3 qualities manifest themselves in our lives you can bet that Satan is at
work trying to minimize the potential we have to further the Kingdom of
God. It worked in the life of Saul and
it will work in our lives as well if you allow them to remain. The first thing Satan likes to see in our
lives is for us to be worried. The next thing he likes is when we are selfish and the last thing Satan enjoys
is when we are jealous. He knows that with those 3 attributes that
our potential, as it was for Saul, will be reduced down to nothing and that at
the end of our life, people will think of us and say sadly, “They had such
potential.”
Turn
to I Samuel 13 and let’s read verses 5-15.
Looking
at the mismatched numbers, one can understand why Saul would be worried,
right? The Philistines had thousands
more troops, many with chariots and all of them well-armed and we find out in
the passage after this that the Israelites didn’t even have any real
weapons! Who wouldn’t be afraid? That’s like bringing a knife to a gunfight
with thousands of gunfighters.
And
then is one of those times when it didn’t matter how much taller and
good-looking Saul was. When all your
army has to defend themselves with are sharp sticks and harsh words, it’s going
to be a bad day. The good news is that the
cavalry is coming. Samuel was the prophet who anointed Saul to
be king according to what God told him and it was Samuel that told Saul to wait
there at Micmash and don’t do anything and don’t worry about the battle because
he would be there in 7 days and he would sacrifice to God and ask for his
wisdom and blessing for the battle.
Have
you ever been almost patient? Have you ever almost done what you were supposed to do? Have you ever been almost obedient? Do you know
what almost-obedience is called?
Disobedient. And the reason he
was disobedient is because Saul got worried.
And he had good reason to be worried as we saw with all those troops
coming against him but he also had an even better reason to not be worried.
His
troops were scattering like rats from a sinking ship. They had no real weapons. He had
to do something. He told Samuel in
verse 12 that he felt compelled. “You
weren’t here, Samuel. God wasn’t here. And so I had to do something to save the
day. I had to do something.”
And
so Saul went through the motions of making a sacrifice because he figured that
was what needed to be done before God would bless the battle but God wasn’t
interested in a cow or a sheep being burned up on an altar. That wasn’t the point. God wanted Saul to wait on God; to have faith
that God would prove Himself faithful to do what He said He would do. But Saul got worried and disobeyed God by
“acting foolishly” as Samuel said.
Do you think worry is a sin? Does it displease God when we sin? Yes, for one thing His word tells us not to
do it. In Philippians 4:6, we are
commanded, “Do not be anxious [do not
worry] about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with
thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” 1 Peter 5:7 says to cast all your anxieties
on him, because he cares for you.
Philippians 4:7 says, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
And that is an incredible promise to us as believers; to
have the peace of God and we get that peace when we refuse to worry. But as we see in the life of Saul, the reason
that worry is a sin is not just because it robs you of your peace. It’s not because you won’t get a good night’s
sleep. The main reason that worry is a
sin is not because it affects you but also because it affects the Kingdom of
God. Worry leads to trying to do it on
your own and that is never the best plan.
Worry leads you to do things that will bring dishonor to God, His name
and His throne and this family.
Mickey Rivers was an outfielder for the Texas Rangers
years ago. His philosophy was this: “Ain’t no sense worrying about things you got
control over, because if you got control over them, ain’t no sense worrying
about them. And there ain’t no sense
worrying about things you ain’t got control over because if you ain’t got
control over it there ain’t no sense worrying about them.”
Not exactly Shakespeare and not exactly biblical but
pretty good advice. God doesn’t want you
to worry but Satan does.
The next thing Satan likes to see in your life is when
you are selfish. Turn to chapter 15 and let’s read verse
1-14.
Some time has passed from chapter 13 and we see that Saul
is militarily in much better shape. He
has gone from 600 men to nearly a quarter of a million. But unfortunately his character is still
lacking. God makes it plain what is
supposed to happen. Samuel makes it
clear that they are to kill every man, woman and child and to destroy
everything that had anything to do with the Amalekites.
We saw something very similar in our study of Joshua just
last week when God told Joshua to take Jericho and kill and destroy everything
in it. And you remember that Achan took
some of the bounty for himself and hid it in his tent. Well, Saul took so much stuff he couldn’t
hide it in his tent but he did try to cover it up.
But before we go any further with Saul’s selfishness I
need to take a time out and I would like to discuss something else we see here
because it is also important to us in the times that we live. In a recent Wednesday night study of “What
does the Bible say about_______?” we looked at what the Bible says about
Israel. It seems very harsh for God to
command Joshua and Saul to kill every man, woman and child and all the animals
and destroy all the stuff. Without going
into a lot of detail, I want you to see why this happened.
Way back in Genesis, God told Abraham, the father of the
Jews, that God would bless those who blessed him and curse those who cursed
him. And the thing you need to realize,
real quickly, is that you don’t know of anyone who is an Amalekite. You don’t know any Philistines. None of you are related to any Moabites. There is no such thing as a Hitite anymore
because of that promise. And for future
reference, if you are here this morning and you are from Russia or China or
Iraq, just know that God has not changed.
It would be very wise to know if you are an American president that God
has not changed His mind about Israel.
All of that is for free.
It doesn’t have anything to do with being selfish but it is a biblical
truth and I just had to touch on it. We
will talk more about that later.
So we see that in spite of the clear directive from the
Lord Saul keeps for himself all the good stuff from the Amalekites. He keeps the best of sheep and cattle and he
also spares the life of the Amalekite king.
This was not done from a merciful heart.
This was done so he could tie the conquered king to his chariot and lead
him around town as a showpiece, to show that Saul was the conqueror and the
other king was conquered.
Obviously Saul is pretty pleased with himself. It says in verse 12 that Saul had set up a
monument in his own honor. At least
Achan had tried to cover it up. He at
least had some shame. Saul had none. He had nothing but selfishness. I think it is interesting what Samuel says to
Saul when he finally catches up to him on his country-wide “see how great I am”
tour.
Saul greets the old prophet with “Hey, Lord bless
you. Mission accomplished. I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do. Ain’t I somthin’?”
Samuel says to his selfish king, “Then why do I hear
sheep and cattle?” If you had done what
you are supposed to do then it would be silent around here. I guess Samuel hadn’t seen the king tied to
the chariot yet. The biggest problem
here is not that Saul took all the good things for himself. It wasn’t so much that God didn’t want Saul
to have nice stuff. He didn’t want him to have that stuff. He didn’t want Saul to have anything to do
with the Amalekites and that included their stuff.
Let’s look at this from Saul’s point of view. He had worked hard to beat the Amalekites. He conquered the place. He deserved to have some of the spoils of
war. And maybe that was true but that’s
not the point. At other times God allows
them, even commands them to take everything home with them. But the point is that God had a reason for
making that demand and when we think even today that God is going to overlook
some disobedience; that it’s not that big of a deal, then we are falling into
that lie of Satan; that lie that keeps us from reaching our full potential.
Of the 3 character flaws that we are looking at today, I
believe this one is the hardest to see in the mirror. None of us think of ourselves as selfish, do
we? A little boy and his sister were
riding a stick horse together. They
galloped around a little while and the little boy stopped and said to his
sister, “If one of us would just get off this stick horse it would make more
room for me.” But he didn’t think of
himself as selfish. It made perfect
sense to him and that’s when Satan gets the victory.
Satan loves it when we are worried. He thinks it’s funny when we are selfish and
he enjoys watching how things work out for us when we are jealous. Turn to chapter 18. Nobody thinks of themselves as being jealous
either. We just think of it as being
wise or being careful or being just or even having the spirit of discernment. The Bible calls it sin. Galatians 5:26 says, ““Let us not
become conceited, provoking and envying each other.” That sure sounds like Saul; conceited,
provoking, envying. Look at chapter 18
verses 5-9.
Can’t you just see the scene here? Saul is leading the triumphal parade and
David is a few feet behind him. The
people are singing and dancing in celebration.
Mr. Selfish Saul is full of himself, doing the queen wave as he rides in
his big gold chariot. And then he hears
this homemade song sung by some ladies as he passes. “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his
tens of thousands.”
Not exactly Top 40 material but it is enough to make Saul
jealous. I Corinthians 13 says that if we have love then we won’t be
envious. The thing about jealousy and
envy is that it, like selfishness is so subtle.
We don’t often recognize it in ourselves and it is often one of the last
things Satan has up his sleeve.
The Screwtape Letters is a fascinating book of satire
written by C.S. Lewis. In it he
humorously describes Satan giving advice to one of his demon nephews on how to
secure the damnation of a British man known only as “the patient.” The nephew has a difficult time getting the
patient to sin. When Satan asks what the
problem is the nephew says that the man is completely honorable and humble, not
at all proud. Satan then replies that
the nephew’s job is to then make the patient proud of being so humble.
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