This morning, we were privileged to read from the Word of God from 1 Samuel chapter 10, we'll be reading in a bridged and short version, a print of for you in your Bible. You know, sometimes we are worried about the battles in life, and so we try to construct something to help us. We want God plus something else because God's not quite big enough, and so Israel insists on a king so they can fight their battles like the rest of the world. And God lets them have their way in their wheat foolishness. So what's really cool about this passing is that in spite of their weakness and trying to do it themselves, we still see God's free-shoring hand of care, which is a call for us to put our full confidence in Him and not in what we construct ourselves as we fight the battles of life. Please stand as we read this terrific passage from 1 Samuel chapter 10. Then Samuel, the last of the judges, took a flask of oil and poured it on his head on Saul's head, and Kissed him and said, has not the Lord anointed you to be prince or king over his people Israel. You shall reign over the people of the Lord, and you will save them from the hand of their surrounding enemies. This shall be the sign to you that the Lord has anointed you to be prince over his heritage. Today, you will meet two men by Rachel's tomb. They will say to you, the donkeys that you went to seek are found, they've been looking for many days for them. Then you shall come to the oak of table, three men going up to God, and Bethel will meet you there. One carrying three young goats, another carrying three loaves of bread, and another carrying a skin of wine, and they will give you two loaves of bread. After that, Saul, you shall come to Gibbeth Elohim, and there you'll meet a group of prophets coming down from the high place with harp, tambourine, flute, lyre before them, prophesying, praising God. Then the Spirit of the Lord will rush upon you, and you will prophesy with them, and be turned into another man. Now, when these signs meet you, do what your hand finds to do, for God is with you. Then go down to Gilgal. When they turn his back to leave Samuel, God gave him another heart, or demeanor, and all these signs came to pass that day. When they came to Gibbeth, behold a group of prophets met him, and the Spirit of God rushed upon him, and he saw prophesied among them, and when all who knew him previously saw how he prophesied with the prophets, the people said, what has come over the son of Kish? He saw also, among the prophets, and later Saul's uncle said, please tell me what Samuel said to you, and Saul said to his uncle, he told us that the donkey's had been found, but about the matter of the kingdom of which Samuel had spoken, he did not tell him anything. Now, Samuel called the people together to the Lord at Misspa, and he said to the people of Israel, thus says the Lord. I brought you out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians, from the hand of the kingdoms that were oppressing you, but today you have rejected your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses, and you have said to him, set a king over us. Now therefore, present yourselves before the Lord by your tribes and by your thousands. God's going to give them their king. Then Samuel brought all the tribes of Israel near, and the tribe of Benjamin was taken by lot. He brought the tribe of Benjamin near by its clans, and the clan of the matrikes was taken by lot, and Saul, the son of Kish, was taken by lot, but when they sought him, he could not be found. So they inquired again of the Lord. Is there a man still to come, and the Lord said, behold, he has hidden himself among the baggage. Then they ran and took him from there, and when he stood among the people, he was taller than any of the people, from his shoulders upright. And Samuel said to all the people, do you see him, whom the Lord has choked, chosen? There is none like him among all the people, and all the people shouted, long live the king. Then Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship, and Samuel sent the people away, and Saul also went to his home and gave you, and with him went men of valor, whose hearts God had touched. But some worthless fellow said, how can this man save us? And he despised him, and brought him no present, but he held his peace. The word of God may he open our eyes and our lives to it, please be seated. This is a very rich, full, and lengthy passage. Much here far more than we'll be able to gather and far more than I certainly understand, but hopefully we can get the scope and the focus of the text when God's message for us, as it connects us personally. Now Israel was young and foolish. God had a long history of delivering her from her problems, and for some of you you have a long history of being delivered from your problems. Of course, the greatest one is being a sinner and having to appear before the judgment seat of God on the final day, and you know God has taken care of that. It's subsequently many other issues of lesser degree have challenged us, and God has seen us through, and yet we often find ourselves doing foolish things to protect ourselves as if we could protect ourselves adequately, indeed our God is enough. But the problems are many, and we have to live this life. And of course a good father, if you're raised in a family, a good father, will show that he still cares about you when you do some fully stuff to get yourself through life by your own efforts. Israel's mistake, it was to ask for a king to help them fight their battles. It was a mistake, that's what we see in this 19th verse, today you've rejected your God who saves you from all your calamities, and you have said to him, set a king over us. Apparently, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was not big enough, and they weren't quite state of the art at this point. All the other nations around them appeared to have kings, but they were behind. They were operating at a more decentralized way. They didn't have a centralized government. God would raise up to melders, or raise up to profits, or raise up a judge or two. And God did it however he wanted, and he spoke frequently through the priests, and through the prophets, and directly, unlike we have today. So he spoke, but it was kind of a hit or miss situation, and the people apparently were concerned living in the land of Cana, and so they decided, hey, you know, we need a better system. Hey, God, how about giving us a king? We really want to get things under control here, and in the language of Pastor Decide that he quoted last week from, I think it was one of the commentators, they were looking for a Mr. Israel, perhaps some of us are looking for Mr. Israel in this election coming up. What's refreshing about this passage is that God knows how foolishly on, and yet he accommodates himself to them, he accommodates himself, and he allows them to have their way. But in the process, what's interesting I find in the passage is that along this path of raising up a king, God, shows signs of reassurance to this weak people of faith. He gives them sign of reassurance, he reassures King Saul as he's being raised up in an inadequate system, and he reassures the people that they had, the right man, and then he also sends a few men of valor along to help Saul along the way. These are some of the things I see in the text, I'm very encouraging, as this people attempt foolishly to, like we often do, construct a system that can protect us as if it could, like our social security, are bringing a certain person to our life, but this now is going to solve our issues, or this new boss, or this child, or do certain things for us, and all these things that can be a blessing to us, and up in our, and yet our security lies elsewhere, doesn't it? You see, the first I'll draw to your attention here in verse 22, it says, they inquire of the Lord and says, is there a man still to come, the Lord said, behold, he has hidden himself among the baggage, I've jumped down a little bit in the text for you, to show you that there's something about Saul here that is worth noticing. Apparently it appears that Saul needs a little reassurance, that it's okay to be king. I mean, who would want to be the first president, or the first king, just fight it to ask? Some suggest he's hiding there out of humility, perhaps, I tend to think it's more about reluctance. In verse 1, he had an experience earlier, and as God's calling him, to be this first king, who's going to help Israel in a way, big way, God shows him a bunch of signs. That's what weak people need, you know, that we need signs, strong people need only to God at his word. God said something, that should be enough, it doesn't have to tell you a story about it, it doesn't have to give you examples, it doesn't have to show historical victories and so forth and so on, these are all helpful, but a word should be enough, it certainly was enough to create the world. But in verse 1, he says, and this shall be a sign to you, that the Lord has anointed you to be prince or leader of his heritage. And if you read through this text, we're not going to develop all that, but we'll see that there are a number of things that was going to happen, Saul as he moved out from Samuel. This was a private anointing there in the first part of the text, this first verses. Samuel, this God's man, he's a man of God, and he anoints Saul to be the first king in a private ceremony. And he says, and you're going to see some things that you're moving along through life here. And some of those things are going to be, you're going to bump into three guys. And you'll see it there in verse 2. Today you'll meet two men by Rachel's tomb and they will say to you, the donkey that you went just to seek or found. Then she'll come to the oak of tabour and their three men going up to God. Bethel will meet you there. One will be carrying three young goats, another carrying three loads of bread and another carrying a skin of wine and two will give you two loads of bread. So first he's going to meet two men that said, hey, you've been looking for donkeys. Oh, they found those. Don't worry about that. Your dad's worried. Worried about you. Forget worried about the donkeys. Then he's going to meet these next three guys and he says, he knows the headed time. That's pretty cool, isn't it? You know what's coming. You do that. You probably play the lottery, right? You know what horses, right? Seriously, but he's not told the lottery numbers. He's just told that this guy's carrying little three little goats. One I'm carrying a sling of wine and the other has three loads of bread. And in the end, they're going to say, here's a couple loads of bread, which was a nice hospitality gesture. And so and these are signs. These are signs that the Saul is to be the king, that it's okay. You can chill. Now God puts you in position responsibility as perhaps a father, perhaps an employee, having a poor position. He gives you a workload. He calls you a task. You've never done it before. You know what? Sometimes we need a sign to say that God is going to help us. God is going to help Saul in that position. So he could he could chill. And there's another sign there that Saul is going to bump into a school of profits. And these were men who were God was speak to on occasion. He would raise them up and have a message for the people. It wasn't like he had a Bible back then. So God would raise up a leader and he spoke directly to them. Of course, whatever they said, it never came true. Yes, what they were supposed to do. Get rid of the leader because he wasn't from God. And so so now we see Saul, he's going to be joining in because he's changing his demeanor. And he joins in with these leaders. And these two starts singing apparently in praise and they say profit sign. Probably just singing praises of God and declaring how great he is. We're not going to spend it here. But and he's out of character and people are saying, wow. Is that Saul? I can't believe it. Is he another leader? Is he another problem? He's not just another problem. He's going to be a king. He's got people's attention. So so God shows these reassuring signs. And he wants us to go through life ashore as we try to face the challenges of life. First of all, he wants you to be short of your relationship, your relationship with God. First John 5, 3, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. There should be no question in your mind that you know you're going to meet God and he's going to say, I love you. You're in good shape. I've forgiven all your sins. I give you life everlasting. There should be no doubt about when you die that you're going to be okay. These things are written that you may know that you have eternal life. It's not arrogance. It's not presumption. It's revelation written down to secure us that you might rest peacefully in your heart at the core. Then go about your life. You don't need to worry about death or illness and all that stuff. There's much troubling and you like the grit of it. Brave points go away. Let the core your settle. God wants us to live in a short life. If you're not certain that the core you're not much used to anybody. You just make everybody nervous being around here. You just need to chill out and know that you're well with God through Jesus Christ trusting in him. So Paul or Saul needed to know he was okay being this position. God reassures him. In spite of the fact it was not even a good methodology. Having the king was a bad idea to begin with. You ever be in a position where he say, this company doesn't know what it's doing. It's doing everything backwards. But you know what? You're there and so is God. So just relax. Don't worry about the methodology. It's imperfect. And if you're a leader, you're also imperfect. But you can rest it before because you know that God's in control. Look at verse seven. Now when these signs meet you, do what your hand finds to do. God's with you. You got the signs. We got enough signs of God's care for us and loves it. It puts us in a position of responsibility. Now just do what you got to do and know the God's with you. He's going to bless you. You might not make the king. A lot of these guys won't be present. But when it is this resting God's care that they'll choose to do it or she secondly, God reassures the community. Not just Saul as the king who's given a position responsibility. But in their foolishness to try to help themselves erect a king who's going to supposedly do something great for them. God reassures the community to know what? Okay, you can do this thing. I'm still going to help. And I'll reassure you that you got the right game. And so we see some stuff happening there. One of we already mentioned we see this change in the meaner of Saul and it's difficult if commentators are all over the place here. What actually happened to Saul? He changed into a different man into a different person later on. If you look at his life, you've got to wonder, did he really have a new heart? I'm not ready to go there on that. That's for sure. If he did, he certainly died in the state of sin. He was at a bad place at the end of his life. But it does appear that his ministry has confirmed that God wanted him there, that there was a change in this countenance and demeanor as he's now praising God with these these prophets and apparently probably singing with them as instruments are all being played along. And it appears that there's this initial burst of enthusiasm and surprising to people. It's so out of character for him. The people says is he a prophet too? I mean, what's he doing over there with all these spiritual leaders, you know? So it's enough to get the people's attention to, hey, you know, maybe God's doing something. Maybe he's raising up a leader here and wasn't going to be a prophet. It's going to be something much more unique. And Israel had never experienced before their first king. And so he, we see the people get their attention, attention has gotten us as Saul, the words out that Saul's now among these other spiritual leaders. And there's a new man and maybe God has a new role for his life. And God can do that. He can do something in your life to put a burst of enthusiasm, a burst of energy, a burst of evasion, and to raise you up for a new role, which is certainly what he was going to do in Saul's life. And he reassures the people. God doesn't want you, by the way, to have leaders that you're like worried about. You're going to get a lot of imperfect leaders, but we don't need to worry about it. He wants you to know that you have the right leader over you, whether it's a father in your home, whether it's your boss. He puts leaders in our lives. And he wants us to rest easy. And so he wanted the community. God wants the community to rest easy, trust him, that they had the right person. And you know, it's interesting whenever Aaron, remember he was the first priest, the long line of priests, there was some question. Is Aaron really supposed to be the priest? How do we know? There was some degree of discussion over his leadership. So in number 178, guess what? They had a kind of a competition. They took Aaron's staff and it did something special as he competed with the other possible leaders. Number 178, it says, at the end of the day, Aaron's staff, though it was dead, it was sprouted, and it brought forth buds and produced almonds. And there, God, confirmed that Aaron indeed was the right guy to be the first priest. Now we get the same thing with the king. We're really going to get the king, and are we going to get God's choice for a king? We're supposed to have. And so we see a number of signs here. Saul got some signs that he was supposed to be there. Now the people get some signs. And then what the people are going to see, first of all, he's going to get Samuel's blessing. Samuel's already put his blessing on him and anointed him. And then he says, see, there's nobody else like him. He's been speaking just there, perhaps, because he was put taller than everybody else. There's a much more fitting type of a guy, what they wanted. You know, they wanted Mr. Israel, as we heard. They also had somebody who was like, handsome, handsome, as we're told elsewhere. And he is much taller. He's like here. Look, time again. So it was very appropriate to get the type of person God chose. But it was the person they wanted. They needed to have. And it was the right one. It was God's choice. And so God also used a system of lots, drawing lots. Now as we read that text, we really don't know exactly how that worked, but verse 19 and following. But it says, present yourselves there before the Lord by your tribes and by your thousands. The Samuel brought all the tribes to Israel near. You see it there. The tribe of Benjamin was taken first by Lot. And he brought the tribe of Benjamin near by its clans. And the clan of the May trite was taken by its Lot. And then narrowing down, saw the son of Case was taken by Lot. So it was some type of elimination, a public elimination. So they get to the right person. And some of them also might have been the Oram and the Thumbam, which some of you know about. If you read the biblical count, it was a special, again, we don't know much about it, but it's in the Bible. It was a special device, and it was probably stored in the pre-Sepha, this press place. He'd have it in there on a special occasion. They would just actually pull it out. It sounds a little bit weird, like a Ouija boy, but it wasn't. It was the real deal in the biblical count, like all the other inspiration parts of the Bible, which is the whole thing. That on occasion, the priest would have a special need and say, Lord, tell us, should we do this, yes or no? Should we go into battle here, yes or no? And this Oram and Thumbam had some way of God was speaking usually to say, yes or no. Sometimes you say nothing. But, and so it appears that they're definitely inquiring to the Lord here, you know, in this text, and they're not sure, it says, verse 21, they inquired again of the Lord, how they inquiring. It may be this Oram and Thumbam, or not holding the text, but they were inquiring, asking, and they were getting special communication, oh my God, God's real, and he spoke, just like he spoke to Adam in the garden, the very beginning. And he continued to speak in a very concrete way through dreams and visions, but now we have the Son of God, Jesus Christ, he spoke in once for all and through him. Now we have the most perfect way he could ever speak, and now we have it before in the scripture. So we don't have that whole process like we used to have, but as they're speaking, what I want to point out here was that there was this public elimination narrowing down that the people might know they had the right guy. And so they get down to all these thousands of people who have been narrowed down through this casting lot business. And finally, they said, is there still somebody else to come verse 22? And the Lord said, yep, that's where he is. He's hiding in the luggage. You know, he's probably behind some bedroll that was on the back of the donkey, wrapped up or a prayer rug or something. He's in there tucked away. There's reluctant soul. And so finally they go into dragging them out. They've never been dragged into leadership by the way. That's usually how it happens. In fact, I would suggest that's probably the better way to get someone to leave. You don't want someone to, oh, I'll do it here. And they just want to kind of push themself up to the front. Be careful. Those kind of people, my exception there. But for the most part, you see in the Bible, God's like Jeremiah, God's like Moses, you know whom I can't speak. I'm not delivered anybody out of Egypt. What are you talking about? Okay, I'll give you your brother. He'll help you. Can't talk. I'll give you a mouthpiece. Yes, it's those kind of people. And we got a whole congregation. I'm married, don't I? I'm one can't speak. You might be shy. You might not be very good at something. But you know, get your feet wet. God calls you and step out and see what he might be able to do. So they use this process of lots to reassure you got the right guy, solves the man for the job. And you know something the people didn't need to worry. It was God's choice. You know, we ourselves are in a process of electing the president. We're not raising up a king but a president. I don't know how many, how many watched the debate last night? Hey, buddy, just one or two of you. Very troubling to watch that debate. Will we get the right president? Now, how do we know? Truth is, did you look at what some of the issues are today that were reason to worry about federal debt, if anyone gets elected, you might have more federal debt or you could have less. You might worry for a reason to worry about tax policies, want your taxes to go up, made depend on who you elect. What about health policies? Do you want to be having everybody to have health coverage at some level? Going to cost a lot of people, if you do that on the other hand, if you're down at the bottom of the room and you don't have much income, you might be happy to get that. And are we going to move into socialism more and more? I mean, it's a real deal. Some people call it democratic socialism. Hey, one thing where everybody seems to get about the same, no matter what you do, a little bit scary to me, but we don't know who we're going to elect yet. And what about immigration policy? Are you happy with 12 million people or whatever? A lot of people here illegally are going to raise up a man to help us decide. Are we going to give these people a waiver and just let them all in? Are there people who are here illegally and struggling to make it? What about we're going to build that wall? Mexico is really going to pay for it. We have to get built. We want it to build it all. We secure our borders. I mean, these are important questions. We look at our neighborhood now and right here in the relay. And it's just very internationalism. And a lot of that how it develops would depend on who we elect. Maybe one of the presidents we elect made decide they want to throw us into wars and a lot of wars. Maybe some say, I don't care what they're doing over there, let's just take care of America. There's a lot to worry about, you know, what about the issue of social security, depending on who we elect? Well, will your money, social security, going to go away, if the truth is that a lot of people just think it's not there anyway. It's already gone. It's your kids are going to give you your social security. If you got any, if you don't, you pray that somebody else has some kids. What about the Supreme Court judge or judges? Sad, they've lost an important person on the court. And that'll be interesting to see how all that coming down. So much to worry about. Israel got the leader of God's choice. They had the, perhaps the Orman of thumb. They had the lot system. They had God himself securing that they would get the right leader. Do you know what? We don't have the Orman thumb. And we don't do the system by lot. We do, we don't even do popular vote. Usually it's popular vote. It's popular delegate vote. And you don't know who you're getting. In fact, you might not want popular vote. But you know what? We're going to get the right president. We're going to get the president that God wants. That's who we'll get. Might not be the one you want. Proverbs 16, 33, the lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the Lord. I may paraphrase that term of the election. The people may cast their votes, but the final decision is termed by the Lord. He gives us what he wants. You know, sometimes God raises up a leader or he raises up a country who is not good, because God wants to send us a message to shape up. Sometimes he sends us one just great. Because God wants to do something great in their lives. It's hard to tell what we need sometimes. Do we need to be sent in the corner, be punished for a couple or, you know, for two, three hours to get a wake up call. So we can start worried about what really matters. Or do we need to grow and prosper and to get more money to get all our economic problems fixed? I'm not sure. Sometimes it's better to have very little money, but sometimes it's better to have more. Especially if you're good at giving it away and blessing people. One thing I know that this past is about control and care and confidence. That God is in control. God chooses Saul for the leader and confirms the Saul needs a bearer. Be there. God shows the people that he's in control as he guides that process to raise him up. And you know what the people needed to put their confidence in God. Because they didn't even need that system. They didn't even need Saul. The reassurance that they had the right leader. All they need to be reassured is they connected to the right God. The only God, you see? The whole thing was a mistake. The only thing they need at Israel, the only thing you and I need is God. If he wants to give us a democracy, so be it. And a good president, maybe one that knows God, that'd be one of them. Maybe he wants to give us one that doesn't know God. I don't know. We don't know how that's going to come out. The one thing we know that our solutions to life do not rest in the president. They've not rest in the government. They don't rest in a king, only one king only. King of kings, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's where our solutions rest. We got him. We don't need to worry about anything else. But it's pretty cool that God's reassuring the people, even in this ridiculous approach to secure themselves, that even though they had constructed the system in Cystinonic King, the God's sign of reassuring hair, his hand of love was still with them, guiding them in the process. To me, that's very reassuring. You know, this is Valentine's Day with clothes here, but some people are looking for a sweetheart. Some have found a sweetheart and you found that here she's not as sweet as you thought. But we have a sweetheart. You know, we have a sweetheart, an incredible king who loves us very dearly. You know, we have everything we need. And so I get worried about what's this election stuff. I get so worried about it. I'm going to have no money if this guy gets elected. Or you know, if this person gets elected, we're just going to be eight more years of what I just experienced, or something like that, you know. So anyway, it's just good for me to be at this passage. Because I know that whatever we're depending on, whatever system or thing we're trying to build, whether it's a bank account or some kind of a democratic society or something to help us, it's a bottom line. It gets down to the same, you know. Can we trust in God's care? It's flawless. Absolutely. The greatest sign of his care is not just like the thing we saw in his past, it was bringing different people into your life. And they're going to give you a couple of loads of bread or they're going to see some God's demeanor change. The biggest sign of his care is in King Jesus as far as in his hand. Nothing can separate from his love. And we're so grateful that he died and lives right. We're in good shape. Just continue to trust when God's caring. Ask His forgiveness for our foolishness to try to set up our own gangs, our own systems to help ourselves as if they can actually do anything for us except for the mercy of God. So having said that, let's confess our sins to the Lord.