“How To Be The Person Satan Wants You To Be” – 1 Samuel 13:1-14

The year is circa 1984, Castleberry High School, early spring at a typical high school track meet.  I was a shot put and discus thrower; not very good but I tried.  I’m done with my events and now I’m just hanging out watching the others and the track coach comes over to me and tells me that the 440 race is about to start and there are only 5 people running. He said there were 5 medals that would be given out.  All I had to do was beat one person and I would get a medal.

They call it the 400 meters now, I think, but it’s just one lap around the track.  How hard could that be, right? So, I lined up, all ready to go in my Chuck Taylor high tops and knee-high socks with multi-color tops and short shorts and when the gun fired, I took off.  I wanted that medal and for the first half of the race, I was winning!  I was a jet.  My curly blond hair was flying in the breeze.  This is great!

But at about the half-way mark my lungs start to burn and one of the guys passes me.  No problem.  No shame in second place.  This is still good.  I’m giving it all I have.  Evidently though, the guy behind me has a little more and he passes me.  That’s ok.  *Huff huff* I’ll get third place…well, make that fourth place but we only have a few yards left and I am hurting. 

I don’t think I even saw the next guy pass me.  But I was not going to let the last guy pass.  No way.  I can hear him.  I can see his feet.  I can feel him right next to me and at the finish line I stick out my chest as far as I can and with every ounce of strength I have and the guy next to me does the same…but he is just a little bit farther ahead.  There’s no nice way of putting it.  I was last.  6^th out of 6.  No medal for me.  Maybe someday I’ll have an illustration where I am the hero but…not today.

Have you ever had the chance to be a hero and failed?  Have you ever been in a situation where if you just do what you need to do, everything will work out fine but you don’t do it?  Maybe all you have to do is be patient and not do anything but you can’t wait and so you jump out there and everything falls apart because of it.  You feel like something has to be done and so you do something and it was the wrong thing to do.  No medal for you.

What keeps you from doing the right thing, whatever that is?  What is it that makes you fail to be the person God wants you to be?  Today we start a 3-part series on how to be the person Satan wants you to be.  Satan wants you to fail.  He wants you to suffer.  He wants you to be miserable and he especially likes it when you worry, when you are selfish and when you are jealous because he can really work with those characteristics.

1 Peter 5:8 says, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”  It is only by God’s grace and mercy and His righteous right hand that Satan has not already devoured you.  I say it all the time that Satan wants nothing more than to kill you dead but if God won’t allow that then he will settle for anything he can get and when he sees you worrying or selfish or jealous, his mouth starts to water because he knows that is the person he wants you to be.

You’re not the first one to be worrying, selfish or jealous, though.  Just a few thousand years ago, just a few thousand miles from here there was a man named Saul.  Saul was the perfect example of the need to be careful what you wish for.  Since the days of Moses, God had governed Israel through priests and judges but they decided they wanted to be like the other nations around them who had kings.  So God gave them a king.

Saul was a man of great courage and strength and ability.  He was a great warrior.  The problem was he relied on his own power and judgment instead of God’s and it led to disaster.  Let’s read about one such instance in 1 Samuel 13:1-14.  In most of the Bibles in the pews it is on page 198.

The setting is the battlefield.  Picture this.  It’s Israel versus the Philistines.  The Philistines have thousands and thousands of well-armed, well-trained troops carrying state of the art weapons (you know, swords and spears) but the Israelites had only 3000 men armed with sticks and rocks and harsh words.  The good news is that the prophet Samuel promised Saul he would be there in seven days and he would offer the appropriate sacrifice and God would be on their side and victory would be theirs.  That’s all Saul had to do.

Let’s read 1 Samuel (or as Trump says One Samuel) 13:1-14. 

Saul was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned over Israel forty-two years.² Saul chose three thousand men from Israel; two thousand were with him at Mikmash and in the hill country of Bethel, and a thousand were with Jonathan at Gibeah in Benjamin. The rest of the men he sent back to their homes.³ Jonathan attacked the Philistine outpost at Geba, and the Philistines heard about it. Then Saul had the trumpet blown throughout the land and said, “Let the Hebrews hear!” ⁴ So all Israel heard the news: “Saul has attacked the Philistine outpost, and now Israel has become obnoxious to the Philistines.” And the people were summoned to join Saul at Gilgal.⁵ The Philistines assembled to fight Israel, with three thousand chariots, six thousand charioteers, and soldiers as numerous as the sand on the seashore. They went up and camped at Mikmash, east of Beth Aven. ⁶ When the Israelites saw that their situation was critical and that their army was hard pressed, they hid in caves and thickets, among the rocks, and in pits and cisterns. ⁷ Some Hebrews even crossed the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. Saul remained at Gilgal, and all the troops with him were quaking with fear. ⁸ He waited seven days, the time set by Samuel; but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and Saul’s men began to scatter. ⁹ So he said, “Bring me the burnt offering and the fellowship offerings.” And Saul offered up the burnt offering. ¹⁰ Just as he finished making the offering, Samuel arrived, and Saul went out to greet him.¹¹ “What have you done?” asked Samuel. Saul replied, “When I saw that the men were scattering, and that you did not come at the set time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Mikmash, ¹² I thought, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the Lord’s favor.’ So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering.”¹³ “You have done a foolish thing,” Samuel said. “You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. ¹⁴ But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command.”

Now, don’t raise your hand but how many of you have ever felt like Saul?  How many of you have ever seen that trouble is coming and God doesn’t seem to be working so obviously you are going to have to do something?  Poor Saul was just doing what he thought was best.  He knew that a sacrifice had to be made and Samuel was a no show / no call and so he made the sacrifice.  What’s the problem?

Well, before we get to the points I want to make about worry, I would like for us to see Saul’s sin for what it really was.  Some people think that his sin was usurping the duty of the priest who was supposed to make sacrifices and maybe that was part of it but I believe the worst part was how he didn’t wait on God.  In Saul’s eyes God wanted a sacrifice so Saul gave Him a sacrifice.  You know, because what God needed was a dead cow, right?

What God really wanted was Saul’s obedience.  God didn’t want a barbecue.  What good is that to God?  God wanted Saul to have faith that when God said to wait, he would wait patiently knowing that God was in control and that God loved him and so what was there to worry about?

Today I think some people tithe with the same thought that Saul had.  They think, “Ok, God wants money so I’ll do Him a favor and give Him some.”  God doesn’t want your money.  He doesn’t need your money.  This church doesn’t need your money.  God owns the cattle on a thousand hills.  He owns everything!  He has the resources to make the sun rise and set and you’re gonna do Him a favor with your paper money?

He doesn’t want your sacrifice.  He wants your obedience.  In just a couple of chapters Samuel tells Saul, “What is more pleasing to the LORD: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Listen! Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of rams.” 1 Sam 15:22 NLT

So, if God tells you to do something (like tithing) then do it cheerfully (2 Cor. 9:7) and with an attitude of obedience rather than sacrifice.  That is being the person God wants you to be.  Satan, on the other hand, wants you to worry and he was very pleased with Saul that day because we see that worry leads to disobedience.  It leads to casting blame and it always has consequences.

Look at verses 7,8 and 9 again.  Saul remained at Gilgal, and all the troops with him were quaking with fear. ⁸ He waited seven days, the time set by Samuel; but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and Saul’s men began to scatter. ⁹ So he said, “Bring me the burnt offering and the fellowship offerings.”

Can’t you just picture Saul?  He’s pacing back and forth, checking his watch, checking his calendar, scanning the horizon looking for Samuel but all he sees are more and more Philistines and fewer and fewer of his own men.  He tells his men to get the sacrifices ready so that when Samuel does get there he can get right to it.  Some more time passes and finally – even though he knows what to do and what not to do – he makes the sacrifice.

Philippians 4:6 says, “do not be anxious about anything.”  God tells us that worry is sinful.  Anything that displeases God is sin and worry is a sin and so often it leads to more sin just like it did in this case with Saul.  Worry led Saul to disobedience.  The rest of Philippians 4:6 says, “but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

Nothing is said in scripture here of Saul saying any kind of prayer.  Why do you think Saul didn’t pray?  Why don’t you pray when trouble comes your way?  Or maybe you do but not enough.  Why is prayer so hard to do?

I heard a guy one time say that prayer instead of worrying is like the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Harrison Ford’s character runs around the corner and finds himself face to face with this great Arab swordsman.  The swordsman makes a great show of flashing his sword back and forth and you expect that they are about to get into this big fight but Harrison Ford just pulls a pistol and shoots the guy, rolls his eyes and walks off.  Do you remember that scene?

The man said that prayer is like that.  Instead of worrying and fighting with Satan we should just pull out our gun of prayer and pull the trigger.  Problem solved, right?  There’s only one problem.  It’s not really like that, is it?  I wish it was but God doesn’t always work that way.  His ways are not our ways and just like God doesn’t just want your money, He also doesn’t just want you throwing up a prayer and walking off.

Do you know what God really wants?  God loves you passionately and shows it generously in so many ways and He wants you to be happy.  He really does.  But do you know what He wants more than your happiness?  He wants you to have a faith-based relationship with Him; a relationship where as soon as you find trouble you hit your knees and say, “God, I can’t solve this.  I can’t fix this but I know you can and so I am just going to trust you to do that in your own perfect timing and in your own perfect will and I am going to leave this problem at your feet.  And when it comes up again tomorrow or even later today I will do it again and again knowing you are in control and that you love me.”

I don’t know what I would have done if I were in Saul’s sandals but what he should have done was pray instead of worrying because worrying is sin and worrying leads to more sin.  It leads to casting blame for one thing.

Look at what Samuel says in verse 11.  “What have you done?”  Does that sound familiar?  Have you heard words like that somewhere before?  Do you remember in Genesis chapter 3 when Adam and Eve ate the fruit and God found them?  God said, “What is this you have done?” and what’s the first thing both of them did?  They blamed somebody else.

Adam blamed Eve and God in one sentence.  “The woman you put here with me gave it to me.”  Eve said, “The serpent deceived me.”  It’s never our fault, right?  When Samuel showed up Saul immediately blamed him for not being there on time when actually Samuel was on time just not when Saul was hoping.  Saul blamed his men.  He blamed the Philistines.  He blamed his feelings.  He blamed the weather.  He blamed unicorns.  It didn’t matter who.  Just don’t blame Saul!

In Discipleship Journal, Don McCullough wrote: "John Killinger tells about the manager of a minor league baseball team who was so disgusted with his center fielder's performance that he ordered him to the dugout and assumed the position himself. The first ball that came into center field took a bad hop and hit the manager in the mouth. The next one was a high fly ball, which he lost in the glare of the sun--until it bounced off his forehead. The third was a hard line drive that he charged with outstretched arms; unfortunately, it flew between is hands and smacked his eye. Furious, he ran back to the dugout, grabbed the center fielder by the uniform, and shouted. 'You idiot! You've got center field so messed up that even I can't do a thing with it!'

How would you describe that coach?  Foolish?  That’s just what Samuel said to Saul in verse 13.  When you see somebody blaming somebody else for their own sins, that’s what you should think.  Especially when it is the person in the mirror who’s casting blame.  You’re acting foolishly.  Sin is foolish.  Worry is foolish.  Not praying is foolish and casting blame on others…foolish.

But that’s what happens when you worry.  We have seen that worrying leads to disobedience.  It leads to casting blame and it always has consequences.  Look at verses 13 and 14. “You have done a foolish thing,” Samuel said. “You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. ¹⁴ But now your kingdom will not endure.”

Your kingdom will not endure.  That’s pretty harsh but sin always has consequences.  I’ve heard it said that sin will always TAKE YOU FARTHER THAN YOU WANTED TO GO, KEEP YOU LONGER THAN YOU WANTED TO STAY and COST YOU MORE THAN YOU INTENDED TO PAY.  That is true even for the sin of worrying.  I don’t think most of us really appreciate how bad worrying really is.  I don’t think we really understand the consequences.

Worrying is basically saying that God is either not strong enough or He doesn’t love enough to fix my problem.  How do you think God – who we just learned a few weeks ago IS love – feels when you worry; when you say to Him that He isn’t strong enough or love enough?

Do you think He laughs and shakes His head?  “That little worry wart child of mine!  Hahaha!”  No!  The sin of worrying is offensive to God and you can expect there to be consequences to that sin just like you would for any other sin.  Worry is a sin that put His Son Jesus on the cross and God will deal harshly sometimes with those who do it.

BOOCOD  There are benefits of obedience and consequences of disobedience.  How many thousand times have you heard that?  But it’s true even with worrying.  I’ve asked a couple people to briefly give testimony about that.  Brian and Lois

In verse 14 Samuel tells Saul that he will be replaced by somebody else.  This other person, Samuel says, is a man after God’s own heart.  You know who that is, right?  I am reminded of how David reacted instead of worrying.  He wrote it in one of the most beautiful psalms ever written.  I’d like for you to sit back and relax and take a deep breath or two because I know you have things that you are concerned about but just listen and picture yourself in Psalm 23 written by David.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. ²     He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters, ³     he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake. ⁴ Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me. ⁵ You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows. ⁶ Surely your goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.

You too can have that kind of peace in the darkest valleys of your life.  Ask God to forgive you of worry and all other sins and repent of those sins.  If you never have, ask Jesus to be Lord of your life, by faith trusting that He is in control and He loves you very much.