Heart of Kings - David 10: Secret Anointing

First Samuel 16, 6 through 13.

When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, Surely the Lord's anointed is before him.

But the Lord said to Samuel, Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him.

For the Lord sees not as man sees.

Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel.

And he said, Neither has the Lord chosen this one.

Then Jesse made Shama pass by.

And he said, Neither has the Lord chosen this one.

And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel.

And Samuel said to Jesse, The Lord has not chosen these.

Then Samuel said to Jesse, Are all your sons here?

And he said, There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep.

And Samuel said to Jesse, Send and get him, for we will not sit down until he comes here.

And he sent and brought him in.

Now he was ready and had beautiful eyes and was handsome.

And the Lord said, Arise, anoint him, for mid for this is he.

Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers.

And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward, and Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Welcome to church this morning.

You're probably thinking, do you guys just like ropes?

And uh yes, we do.

So uh we uh I just started to feel bad because people over here in the wings, we've only got these two big screens on the wings, and so we noticed during singing, when you're trying to read the creeds with us or track along with the scripture, it seemed like that was a difficult place to be, to be able to see, because you're looking up like this.

Uh so we roped off these side sections, and the idea is that like there's just the this kind of front area up and back is where we can sit.

So uh as well as any front row that's available.

So wherever you're sitting, in enjoy it.

Hopefully you can worship from that place as well.

Uh uh also something to do with sound, but that's more Zach's thing.

So it sounded good this morning, though, right?

Yeah, that's because of where you're sitting.

See them?

All right.

Uh so a couple of announcements.

Uh we've this is the third week I get to announce, but just in case, uh this the snow this season has been insane.

So uh if you're uh joining us for the first time in a while, we uh the the building is under contract, so we uh will be uh going through quite a bit of transition over the course of the next year.

Uh the church who is buying this building, church we have an excellent relationship with, and uh we'll be able to host evening services here for free uh for six months following closing, which is uh May 9th, if everything remains on track.

So expect some changes, uh, but good news uh we're moving into our next season as a church.

Uh if you're wondering where am I, you're at Redemption Church Denver.

My name is James, I'm the pastor here.

Zach is our worship pastor, and we uh uh we connect in basically two ways at Redemption Church Denver.

We gather large and we gather small.

So if you are here, you are at our large gathering, and we also gather small throughout the week in each other's homes.

So if you would like to do that, become a part of one of those smaller gatherings in each other's homes, then uh you can download our app, go to your app store of choice and type in Redemption Church Denver, and then click groups, and then click join a group, then you can scan through, and there's a bunch of like basically people's wedding day photos of the people who host the groups, and you can click the one that uh you uh live closest true loop live closest to, um, and then join their group.

Uh okay.

Also, uh we are uh funded by your giving.

Um, and this is our time of the year where we do a giving drive.

So uh you'll get a free pair of socks that says Redemption Church Denver if you become an evergreen partner.

Um yeah, that was for those of you who have not been listening to NPR lately.

Uh uh on that note, though, it's not something we bring up often.

Uh but uh one of the main ways that we can express our worship is by giving, by tithing to the church.

And that's what sustains our ministry, of course, but it's also a way of saying to God, the uh this is not mine, and this doesn't own me.

Uh you this is yours, God, and you own me.

And so by releasing our hand with our finances, we are honoring God and we are saying to him, you are the one who cares for me.

So it's a tangible way that we can express our worship.

And you can do it if you download our app and you tap give.

Um, so not many apps afford you obedience.

Okay.

Uh with that, uh, let's go ahead and pray and we'll jump into our text for the day.

Father, Zach and I were praying in his office that you would give us a spirit of worship from the reading of the Lord's Prayer and the beginning of our service through the singing and the saying of the creed together, through the preaching and through our singing together and our communion at the end, Lord, that from start to finish we would worship you.

Father, I pray that my preaching today would be worship.

I pray that the hearing of it together as a body that we're gathered here together now would be worshipful to you.

Lord, that you might be honored and glorified by our church, which you hold together.

Father, give us hearts that seek that.

Lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So last week we covered the uncompromising justice of God.

And we saw that demonstrated when Saul was rejected by God for not annihilating the people that he was called to annihilate.

Now, that was a challenging topic to move through because when we did a gut check in the beginning and we saw God command Saul to destroy this group of people, and then Saul not follow through with it, and because of not following through, get rejected by God, when we do a gut check on that, we think, you know, I'm kind of on Saul's side.

This seems too strange of a justice to want to be rooting for.

Then what we saw in God's uncompromising justice is that while it is this terrifying thing when we see it done in practice in the world, it's also our only hope for there to be any real meaning in this world.

Our only hope is that one day all things will be put to right, all the wrongs might be undone, and the only type of justice that could accomplish that is the type of justice that God would hold, where he sees everything perfectly and objectively and applies it to the world.

This week, having seen God's uncompromising justice, this week we're going to look at this other aspect of God and his selection of David.

And we're going to see his unstoppable grace.

And we have to see both together.

We have to see both the uncompromising justice of God because that's what makes sense of this unstoppable grace of God.

Now, when we're talking about these issues that are so fundamental and so core to who God is and who he's shown himself to be, it's helpful for us to consider what is it that we're actually going to learn here?

Like, how can we know something like this about God?

How can we hold together his uncompromising justice by which we would be punished under, and his unstoppable grace by which some are saved?

How can we hold these two things together that seem like they're in blatant contradiction with each other?

Well, I just want to set out a guardrail before we get started.

And it's the way that Scripture itself describes us as humans and how we should expect to learn and know things.

So this is a really helpful guardrail because oftentimes we expect to know things in a way that as humans we actually can't possibly know them.

And because of that, we think we're coming up against contradictions in God, whereas the reality is we're just discovering the limits of our own reason.

I think, well, it was Pascal, Blyce Pascal, the mathematician and the guy and the gambler with the wager.

He wasn't really a gambler.

That joke was for like four people.

Pascal said that the purpose of our reason is to discover the limits of our reason.

And that's what we need to understand to know how it is that we approach these depths of God.

Solomon, the wisest man who had ever lived, in Ecclesiastes 3, he makes this statement.

You're about to learn about yourself.

Says, he has made everything beautiful in its time.

It's referring to God, and that's a complicated statement that we're not going to deal with right now.

Also, he has put eternity into man's heart.

Yet, so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

Okay, there's two clauses there, those two last clauses.

He's put eternity into man's heart.

You know, we think things should last forever.

When we're in love, we say, I love you forever and ever, and I love you forever and a day, and we add these terrible things.

And we we have this ability to grasp concepts.

Like when I say you do you grasp the concept of infinity, like do you know what infinity means?

We all know what infinity means, but we don't know what infinity means.

I can't count that high.

It's too high, it's scary, I'll fall down.

You can't internalize that type of concept.

You can't experience it in any sort of existential way.

And yet, you have this grasp of it.

That's what it means to be human.

You have this thing that's able to grasp eternity.

So just from our moment, we can imagine a past and we can imagine a future and how that future will develop and how those two things are connected in this one story.

We can somehow reason those things.

From this, we can imagine things having eternal consequences.

I had a poster in my room growing up of Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the armies of the North, loyal servant to the true Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife.

And he uh um that's from the movie The Godfather.

And he he uh it said, what we do in life echoes in eternity.

Now it's in like eighth grade.

Oh, what I was doing in life.

And that's really true.

We that makes deep sense to us as people.

That's a that's that's really a true thing.

We have this concept of like, you know, this thing that I'm doing presently, it this I can imagine this having eternal implications, and yet we can't see the story from beginning to the end.

Instead, we're locked in time, only able to engage with this present moment.

The future is a mystery to us, and the the past is untouchable by us.

So we have this eternity in our hearts, and yet we can't see the story from the beginning to the end.

And God created us that way.

In creating us as creatures with this eternal concept, yet bound in time, think of the things he's able to demonstrate to us.

He's able to demonstrate his faithfulness over time because we can see it recur throughout our lives.

Then he gives us moments to trust in it.

He can make things seem impossible when in reality they're certain because he is controlling the narrative.

And so he can bolster our faith.

He can tie us up in sin for a time and yet demonstrate his grace to us in a way that rescues us.

You see, the unique way that God demonstrates the gospel, it's as though he tailor-made people like us with our limits to be able to experience his grace.

And so the way that we experience his grace is not by trying to understand it as though we are God, as though we can stand outside the whole story and say, I can see the whole thing from beginning to end.

We have that temptation because part of us can sense eternity.

But we have this real limit, which is that we can't see the story from beginning to the end.

So when we approach, how do we reconcile something like God's uncompromising justice and God's unstoppable grace?

These two things that when we stand back, we think they can't possibly both be expressed.

We have to approach that understanding our limits, the type of creatures we are.

God reveals himself for us to know him as people, not as other gods.

And so let's approach him that way.

What we're going to move into is the story of David's anointing.

And we're going to see that the human limited perspective that's held during this anointing is what allows God to demonstrate his grace.

So we see his secret grace demonstrated to the people of Israel, which leads us to an overlooked king who is David.

And then we'll see how this all hinges on God's choosing, and how that's our entire hope.

That we would belong to God.

So, uh, are you ready?

It's a long intro.

Uh sorry to start with philosophy, uh, especially on St.

Patrick's Day.

All right, 1 Samuel 16, verse 1, let's jump in.

1 Samuel 16:1

The Lord said to Samuel, How long will you grieve over Saul?

Since I have rejected him from being king over Israel.

Fill your horn with oil and go.

I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.

So last week we saw Saul, Saul rejected by God through Samuel.

Samuel is given the command to go to Saul and uh tell him that God has rejected him from the kingship.

But it hasn't really taken effect yet.

Saul is still the ruling king.

But Samuel's in this place of deep mourning because the kingdom is in this incredibly precarious situation.

They have this king.

And their very desire to have that king was a rejection of God.

It was saying to God, You will not be king over us.

Instead, we will have our own human king like all the nations.

And now that king by whom they rejected God has been rejected by God.

And so the nation is rudderless.

It's untethered.

And Samuel is in this deep mourning over the situation that they're in.

One that he has this direct role in.

But God interrupts Samuel's mourning and he gives him a mission.

He says, Don't keep mourning over Saul.

I've rejected him.

That story is done.

Take your horn of oil and go anoint a new king.

And this king's going to be different from the type of king that Saul was.

When Samuel was commanded to go anoint Saul, God told him to obey the voice of the people.

That is, listen to what the people of Israel are demanding.

They want a king like all the nations, obey their voice, and go anoint Saul.

And what did they get?

They got a king like all the other nations.

A king not desiring God.

But this king is different.

This is a king that is the son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, and God describes him as a king I have provided for myself.

This king is not one where you obey the voice of the people.

This is one that God has provided for himself.

So the issue is Saul is still the reigning king.

And I don't know much about diplomacy, but I know that kings hate it when you anoint other kings while they're still kings.

So Samuel also knew that, and he says this.

Samuel says to God, How can I go?

If Saul hears it, he will kill me.

The Lord said, Take a heifer with you and say, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord, and invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do, and you shall anoint for me him whom I declare to you.

See, Samuel sees in Saul this characteristic that's going to become apparent throughout the rest of our story.

It's that the thing that Samuel was most afraid to do was not to reject Saul as king, because he knows the bad news to Saul wouldn't be you're no longer king anymore.

The bad news to a person like Saul would be this other person is king.

You see, the way that Saul lived was in terms of jealousy and comparison.

And that drives his whole energy as king.

And Samuel was wise enough to pick up on this and know this about Saul.

He's saying, look, if I go and anoint this other king, Saul's gonna have me killed.

Can we please do this in some sort of order where we get rid of Saul and then we bring in a new king?

But that's not what God allows for.

Instead, God says, We will do this anointing in secret.

Go and make a sacrifice to me.

And what you'll say is that you're making a sacrifice to me.

And gather the people, gather Jesse and his sons, and then I will show you who you should anoint.

And so that's what Samuel does.

And he makes his way to Bethlehem, a city which will become increasingly important throughout the Bible.

And he says, when he approaches the city, the elders of the town come out.

And well, I'll just read it for you.

So Samuel did what the Lord commanded.

This is 1 Samuel 16, 4 through 5, and came to Bethlehem.

The elders of the city came to meet him, trembling, and said, Do you come peaceably?

And he said, Peaceably, I have come to the same place.

To sacrifice to the Lord.

Consecrate yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.

And he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

We get a sense for the condition that the nation is in by Samuel's emotions and by the emotions of the elders of Bethlehem.

When Samuel approaches them, they are trembling with fear.

They asked, Are you coming peaceably?

That's because the last thing that they saw Samuel do was act as the obedient hand to deliver God's justice to Saul.

The last thing they saw Samuel do was show up to Saul, reject him as king, rebuke him.

And then the king who Saul had spared, Samuel himself grabs the sword and I quote, hacks him to pieces.

So that's the last big news that the elders have about Samuel.

Is that when he shows up, he's here to bring the justice of God.

And that's something that we are very likely going to fall under.

We are the ones that chose a king for ourselves, and by such we rejected God, and that king has now been rejected by God, and the one who is the instrument of God's justice has shown up in our town unannounced.

The elders are trembling when they approach Samuel.

Because they feel themselves under the weight of God's justice.

The whole nation must have had this anxiety.

Are they rejected by God?

Has God cast them off now that he's cast off their king?

The representative head of the people is gone.

What does this mean for the people of Israel?

That's the situation that Samuel shows up into.

And so, to their relief, Samuel says, Yes, I've come peaceably.

And I've come to sacrifice to the Lord.

And he calls them to consecrate themselves and to prepare themselves to join for the sacrifice.

And then he grabs this other family, Jesse and his sons, and he says, You come to the sacrifice as well.

You know, when we hear that it's Jesse, Jesse the Bethlehemite, the son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who will be anointed king, we're given this glimpse of a story that Samuel wasn't able to see from beginning to the end.

Right now, Samuel and the rest of the people of Israel feel as though the whole kingdom is balancing on this precipice.

And that under the justice of God, they may very likely just be cast off.

That all of the sin that had entangled the nation will finally come to bear, and this nation that God had made promises to will be undone.

That's the position that they're in.

But when it's Jesse the Bethlehemite, what we're shown is that the rescue of God has been working in the background, in secret, for generations.

That Samuel is just now stepping into a story of God's redemption for his people, that God had been working since before they had even rejected him with another king.

They couldn't see that story from the limited perspective that they had.

But now, with this simple obedience, Samuel is about to pick up that thread.

Jesse was a Bethlehemite, but that almost wasn't so.

His grandparents, um, well, I'm getting my generations confused.

I'll start the story here.

A couple generations before Jesse, there was a man named Elimelech.

And Elimelech had a wife named Naomi.

And they lived in Bethlehem, they owned land there.

But there was a famine in the land of Bethlehem.

And so they leave Bethlehem to a nearby region called Moab.

So there's great four-wheeling.

And if you can't eat, you might as well.

And so they arrive in Moab, and uh Elimelech and Naomi and their two sons, and their two sons marry Moabite women.

So they marry these foreign women.

One of them was named Orpah and the other was named Ruth.

And the two sons and Elimelech, the husband, in a tragic turn of events, all three die.

And so there's just these two daughter-in-laws left with their mother-in-law.

There's Orpah, Ruth, and their mother-in-law Naomi.

Naomi says, look, it's not like I'm gonna have more sons for you guys to marry.

You still have a hope of establishing a life.

Stay here with your people where you have the connections, where you could restart your life again.

Stay here in Moab.

I'm gonna go back to Bethlehem to see if I can start my life again there.

And they all cry together at this parting.

Uh and Orpa says, Yeah, that makes sense to me.

I'm gonna stay here in Moab.

And Ruth says to Naomi instead, I will never depart from you.

Where you go, I will go.

Where you stay, where you decide to settle, I will stay.

And your God will be as my God, and your people will be as my people.

I have no legal obligations to you anymore, but I'm not gonna stop showing my love to you.

And so I'm gonna commit to you.

And so Ruth and Naomi leave together, back to Naomi's old home, uh, Bethlehem.

Ruth makes her way into a particular field to glean after the harvesters had passed through, which was a common practice after the harvesters, main harvesters passed through.

It was common and legal to go behind them and glean what they didn't take.

That way you might have some food if you had no other provision.

And when she's gleaning in this field, she gets noticed by the owner of the field who's a man named Boaz.

And Boaz hears her story, he hears of the kindness that Ruth had showed Naomi by staying with her.

And he says, I've heard about you, I've heard this amazing love that you've demonstrated.

I'm gonna take care of you.

Come and glean in my field whenever you need to.

And so Ruth comes back, she's like, I met this great guy named Boaz.

It's Naomi.

And Naomi's like, oh, cool, that's great.

Boaz, I'm related to him.

He actually is the one who would have the rights to purchase the land that I still own here.

And if he did that, because of a lot of cultural things that we don't get now, he would marry you.

And so uh the story goes on, and Boaz discovers this connection that he has with Ruth and Naomi, and he decides to take in this foreign woman and buy the land and marry her.

There's some feet that get uncovered, and the uh they end up having a son together.

So this woman, Naomi, is considered to have this grandson now.

Naomi, who lost her husband and her two sons, who had no children, this barren woman.

Now, at the end of the story, where it ends, she sits and she holds her grandson because of Ruth's faithfulness to her.

And so this is where the story ends.

This is, if you if you want a recap of the story, you can read the book of Ruth, which is in the Bible, which is in our app.

This is the verse where it ends, Ruth 4.17.

And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, this is the son, saying, A son has been born to Naomi.

Can you imagine Naomi hearing that?

They named him Obed.

He was the father of Jesse.

The father of David.

Samuel's mourning because the nation is in such a precarious situation.

The king by which they rejected God has been rejected by God.

How can I go and anoint a new king without being killed?

The elders of the nation tremble under the justice of God.

And yet, God has provided for himself a king.

And he's been providing for himself that king that will bring a rescue to the nation since before they had even rejected him.

How do we hold these two things together?

The uncompromising justice of God and the unstoppable grace of God.

How many times have you stood shaking with your hope dangling as though over a precipice, saying there could possibly be no way out?

There could be no goodness to come from this terrible situation.

This is only bad news.

Saying the obedience that God is calling me to is just to throw my life away.

If only we'd known.

So you have to live by faith.

But if you could peel back the curtain, you would know that your obedience is no risk.

The grace that I'm demonstrating here is unstoppable.

If Samuel had known the story, he would be able to step in and say, Well, of course, I've got to go anoint David.

And that's the king that God made for himself, and he's been guiding that story for generations.

Nothing can stop that grace.

Nothing can stop that from moving.

And yet, because it's not right in front of our face, we stand and we tremble in fear.

Foolishly, even.

What if we could zoom out?

What if by faith we could live in the story that God is actually writing?

So, through Samuel's simple obedience as he sees this story, he's about to, in this simple obedience, pick up the thread of that story that God has been weaving for the nation's redemption in this family.

But he does it through a king that he otherwise would have overlooked.

So 1 Samuel 16, 6 through 7, says, When they came, he looked on Eliab.

Samuel, this is at the anointing ceremony.

So when they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, Surely the Lord's anointed is before him.

But the Lord said to Samuel, Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him.

For the Lord sees not as man sees.

Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

So David's older brother, his oldest brother, is the first person that Samuel sees when he's considering, okay, God, show me which of these sons to anoint.

That's Eliab.

And so Eliab must have looked like probably what Saul looked like.

The guy looks like a king.

He stands a foot and a half above everybody else.

You look at him and you think, that's the type of leader we want.

That's the type of figurehead we want to follow.

And yet, God corrects Samuel's vision.

He says, what you're looking at, these earthly markers of what a king should look like, that's not the way I seek a king.

And that's not the way that I provide a king for myself.

I work in the secret places.

I work in the heart of a person.

What I'm interested in is the condition of their heart towards me.

And that's where a king really lies.

Not in these outward things, but in the inner person, in the heart.

See, God knew that the type of king that Israel needed was not a king like Saul.

Saul was a king that the people chose to replace God.

And those are typically the things we're enticed by, by their external appearances.

But rather, this was a king that was chosen to lead the people to God.

A king chosen to demonstrate God's rescue.

And so the processional continues.

And the seven sons of Jesse are paraded in front of Samuel.

And the Lord says to Samuel, it's none of them.

So Samuel's like, uh, okay.

And Samuel said to Jesse, Are all your sons here?

And he said, There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he's keeping the sheep.

And Samuel said to Jesse, Send and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes.

And he sent and brought him in.

Now he was ready and had beautiful eyes and was handsome.

And the Lord said, Arise, anoint him, for this is he.

Who is the king that God chose?

He wasn't even there.

His own father thought, why don't you stay with the sheep?

Because whatever we're going to couldn't possibly concern you.

You're not at a stage, you're not at a place where you could possibly be of consequence for whatever we're going to that has to do with Samuel.

Stay with the sheep alone.

That was typically the youngest family member's job was staying with the sheep as a shepherd.

We tend to think of shepherds as like, I don't know, like burly people.

But that wasn't the case.

Shepherd was a simple job for the lowest member of the family.

Male or female, it didn't matter.

He was just off doing the simple, normal, simplest work of the home.

Being a shepherd with the sheep.

And yet, that's who God chooses.

Look, Samuel's got to be thinking all the time, like, okay, well, we didn't have to do it this way.

Like you could have just said, like, he's in the field, go anoint him.

Why'd we have to get everybody together and you tell me no six times?

Well, why does God operate like that?

It's not that God was like, oh, I didn't think you'd see Eliab first.

I thought you'd run into David on the way there.

No, there's no such thing, right?

God is doing something to Samuel.

God is retraining Samuel's vision.

He's pointing out to him his own blindness.

He's saying, I want you to see all the things I'm saying no to.

I'm saying no to the eldest son.

Those things aren't going to carry forward in the way that I operate.

What's going to matter is my selection.

I'm saying no to the one that the parent would have chosen.

Those types of factors, those aren't going to matter in the kingdom that I'm making.

What will matter is if I choose them.

Saying no to the one with the most experience, the one who seems most qualified.

Those aren't going to matter in this type of kingdom.

What I need is someone who humbly pursues me.

That's what's going to matter in this type of kingdom.

And so Samuel re-excuse me, God retrains Samuel's vision through this process.

And Samuel hears.

Overlooked and yet chosen by God.

The Spirit of the Lord rushes upon David.

And what does David do once he has the Spirit of the Lord?

And what does Samuel do now that he's anointed the new king?

Samuel just goes back home.

And David just goes back to the sheep.

The story is still somehow moving in secret.

It's still a story that we can't see from beginning to the end, and yet the rescue of the nation is certain.

Why does God operate this way?

Why does God hide his rescue plan that he's been working for generations in the simple faithfulness of a Moabite woman?

Why does he put it there?

Why not a brave Moabite king?

Why does God hide the king through whom he's going to bring peace to the nation?

Why does he hide that king out like writing songs for sheep?

Which is probably what David did, as we'll see.

Why there?

Why those places?

It's as though they're intentionally hidden.

There's a principle in this.

There's a principle in the way that these two stories come together.

Or two aspects of the story come together.

The hidden king and the secret plan of redemption.

And Paul explains it in 1 Corinthians.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, 27 through 29, he says, But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.

Why does God do that?

So that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

Who could claim the rescue of Israel?

It couldn't have been Samuel, he would have chosen the wrong person.

Could it have been Naomi?

Did she choose the right daughter-in-law?

Could it have been David?

He didn't anoint himself.

Who can claim the rescue of Israel?

It is only God.

It is only his doing.

We sing all these songs, and I like try and figure out a way to communicate this.

The first song that we sang this morning is a song called Nothing But the Blood of Jesus.

Did you know that that song's true?

I think that's a song that we sing and we think that's nice.

Nothing but the blood.

I don't know why.

We don't do that.

Made that part up.

But we we think of it as like, oh, it's like a, it's almost like a it's a colloquialism, or it's like, yeah, nothing but the blood.

That's the most important thing.

But no, what is our hope?

As people who can't see the beginning from the end, who are trapped in a prideful arrogance towards the Lord in a nation dangling on a precipice.

What is our only hope?

It is that God would choose to save us.

That's it.

And so when we stand before God, we have no opportunity to boast in that salvation.

And he makes his story intentional like that.

He carves his story in a way to drive our worship.

If he used the strong things, you know what we would say saved us?

The strong things.

If he saved them through King Saul, they'd say, Kings that look like that, that's the ticket.

But no, he uses a shepherd.

That way we know who saved us here.

This was only the grace of God.

When we come under his uncompromising justice, he saves us in such a way where we see it was only him.

It's only by him that we could be saved.

It is only by the author of that uncompromising justice that we could possibly be rescued.

He is the only one capable of providing this unstoppable grace.

That's where Paul continues.

He says this, the next verse.

He says, and because of him.

You know, Paul, in this section where he says God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak to shame the strong, low, despise things that aren't to bring to nothing things that are.

And he says, you know who God uses to be Christians?

The weak, the low, the overlooked.

These are our qualifications.

And he continues on and he says, and because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, and sanctification and redemption.

You know what that means?

Let's walk through those words.

Jesus, we are put in Christ because of God.

Look at the words.

Because of him, which is God, you are in Christ.

Why are you in Christ?

Because you're smarter than the person sitting next to you who isn't?

No.

It's because of him.

It's his grace that saves.

You are in Christ Jesus, which means he took what we deserve, so we're in him.

We get what he deserves.

We are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, this thing that we would have thought of as just foolishness.

Why would his suffering on the cross atone for my sins before a perfectly just God?

How could that possibly be?

That looks foolish.

But because God has worked in our hearts, we say that is the very wisdom of God, that this overlooked thing becomes our only hope for salvation.

He became to us righteousness and sanctification.

So that means that we are given Christ's righteousness.

So we are in Jesus, so that when God looks upon us, he sees the very righteousness of God that he has given to us.

So that means that this nation, if we go back to Israel, that looks like they're just coming under the wrath and uncompromising justice of God, now they are in his grace.

For the Christian, it's the same thing.

Because the story of redemption has been working.

His righteousness, which is a present thing, and his sanctification, which is the process throughout our lives of us becoming more like God.

That means, and this is where we start to fall in our traps, where this becomes not true.

We think, sure, it's the gospel that got me in, but I'm responsible for my faithfulness and my obedience to keep me in.

And we've lost it again.

It is God who works in us, our sanctification.

When we say nothing but the blood, we mean nothing.

Nothing but the blood.

And redemption.

That we might be changed into his image.

Why does God do that?

So that as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.

Zach and I's prayer today is that it would be worship, that this service would be worship from start to finish.

And that's because that's the whole point of God's redemptive project here.

All that we can come to him with when we see that we stand before him, although we deserve this uncompromising justice, we stand before him in this unstoppable grace.

And when we stand in that alone, the only response is worship.

What do we boast in?

I was so sinful that he had to save me.

What a boast.

I was so dead that he had to come and speak and make me alive.

What a boast.

Who gets that glory?

Who is made great by our salvation?

It is God.

So when we see how he chooses, the way that he chooses, my fear is not that we don't have people who aren't strong enough to be Christians.

My fear is we don't have people who are weak enough.

We don't have people who are willing to say, I really am limited.

And you know what?

If I have any hope of standing before a justice that perfect, God's gonna have to be the one to do it.

When we see that, our lives are marked by worship.

And we're driven towards an obedience that looks like Samuel's and these simple acts of obedience like his, which is go find the new king, I'll tell you who it is.

And Samuel just does it.

And because of that, he gets to pick up this thread of this redemptive story and see how it moves through all of time.

Your days are surrounded by simple acts of obedience.

Simple acts of obedience that provide you these opportunities to pick up a thread and say, look at how God is bringing redemption into these dark places.

It seems as though a message like this might give us an excuse to just check out.

Say, well, if it's all up to God and it's just all his.

But if we think that, then we've we've missed the whole point.

The hope of our salvation is that the sin which would have caught us up and destroyed us for all eternity, now we might no longer be entangled by that sin.

But we might live in his righteousness.

Paul says elsewhere, it's actually in our Bible reading from two days ago, he says, for I've been crucified with Christ, and it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.

So with that, let's take one question.

No questions today.

Great.

When dealing with the uncompromising justice of God, the only answer is the election of God.

And I know it raises so many questions.

But we have to approach those questions with the limits that we have as people.

Which means not approaching him in a way where we could boast face to face as though we understood each other.

But one that humbles us before him.

Both the grace of God and the justice of God force our humility before him.

And it's in that humility that we are able to live in the joy of God.

Let's remember that as we come and take communion.

And remember that this was not a costless grace.

This is not a free grace for God.

It's a free grace for us.

But the justice of God was demonstrated in Jesus, who loved us and gave himself up for us.

Let's remember that as we take communion this morning.

Let's pray.

Father, we come before you, resting in your sovereign grace.

And I pray that you would work this into our hearts so that our lives would be so humble that they would be marked by a constant, deep, unceasing worship of you.

Lord, would you make that the marker of us as a people, that we love this glorious God who saved us through the humblest means.

Father, would you work that into our hearts?

Lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.