Heart of Kings - Saul 06: Saul Made King

God chooses the broken to lead even.

First Samuel ten.

Now Samuel called the people together to the Lord at Mizpah, and he said to the people of Israel, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, I brought up Israel out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians, and from the hand of all 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.

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 Matrites 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 upward.

And Samuel said to all the people, Do you see him, whom the Lord has chosen?

There is none like him among all the people.

And all the people shouted, Long live the King.

The word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Welcome to uh Redemption Church Denver.

My name is James Rathman.

I am the pastor here at Redemption Church.

Uh that cold that's going around, I have.

Um so this is what I sound like today.

Uh which is cool.

Um I sound like Phoebe Buffet when she was sick.

So uh welcome to church.

Uh thanks for joining us this morning.

Uh a couple of announcements before we get started.

We have closed the application cycle for the elders.

So if you haven't been followed up with yet, which I don't think anyone has, because the board has been in the midst of some uh uh sort of craziness, hopefully surrounding the sale of the building.

Uh that's taking up most of our time.

Yeah.

I mean, but it might not be.

So that's now you know as much as I do.

Um uh but you will be followed up with if your application is in.

Thanks for your patience.

Uh also, uh next Sunday we have a baby dedication.

So if you have a baby you would like to dedicate, hopefully your own, then please sign up in the app.

Uh even if that gets just a little chuckle, I'm gonna keep making that joke.

Uh so uh yeah, uh those are the only two announcements.

So let's go ahead and pray and we'll get into our text for the day.

Father, I pray that you would attend us this morning.

It's only by your spirit that we can understand your word, and I pray that your spirit would show your word to us.

Lord, as we examine the hearts of these kings that you've established in Israel, I pray that you would show us reflections of our own hearts in a really personal way.

Lord, that we would each individually be able to reflect on the condition of our heart before you, that we might see ourselves clearly, lucidly.

Lord, would you grant us that wisdom that we might learn to depend on you?

Father, lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So if you download our app, you can tap on the very bottom the button that says Bible, and you can join us in a Bible reading plan that we're doing as a church.

It's the Robert Murray McShane reading plan.

It's been around for like a hundred years, and it's a great way to move through the Bible in a year.

You actually cover the New Testament and the Psalms twice, and the Old Testament once.

And we're doing that as a church, and it's been so it's been well honestly one of my favorite things, like ever.

Uh and uh hearing from uh so many people that are reading along with us and the different insights and convictions that the Holy Spirit is bringing by time in the Word.

It has been so cool.

And one thing that I have loved hearing is people encountering the strangeness of the Bible.

So if you're reading with us for the first time, uh does anybody sort of feel that, resonate with that?

That we you know, we the Bible is something that we often think we just know.

It's one of those books that is so built into our culture that we know the plot of it, whether we've read it or not.

You know, we we know that uh Captain Ahab wants to kill Moby Dick, but I've never read that book.

And because I know that, I think I don't need to read that book.

And we think of the Bible a lot of times in the same way.

Like, I know that story, the Jesus bit, and in the beginning, God created bit, and then you read through Genesis and you encounter this strangeness and ambiguity and all these instances of things happening in Scripture that you wish the Bible would say, and someone did so-and-so, and that was a bad thing.

And then someone else did this thing and that was a good thing.

But instead, what we're met with most of the time is this ambiguity that looks a lot like life.

And instead of just being told in a comment, this is good, this or bad, with this sort of mechanical relationship between faithfulness and blessing and sinfulness and curse, instead we see this deeply ambiguous world that feels a lot like our world, and the only constant is the faithfulness of God's promises that weaves this through line through this intense ambiguity.

When you're reading through Genesis and you read that Judah gets his daughter-in-law pregnant, and then it just sort of moves on to the next chapter.

It's like, could someone come in and say, like, and that was a bad thing?

Don't do that.

Instead, it's just like, and then back to the Joseph story.

You have to keep reading.

You have to stay in the whole story.

Because the Bible is teaching us how to trust in a faithful God in the midst of a world that is sending us constantly ambiguous, complicated, difficult to understand signals about what God is doing.

What makes us a mature Christian, what makes us a faithful person is someone who is able, in the midst of all this complexity that we live with, to trust in the faithfulness of God through it.

To trust that although we can't see it right now, he is weaving this beautiful through line through all of the world of his faithfulness.

So that's what we follow.

That's what we depend on.

Today we are encountering one of those questions in scripture that is just complicated like that.

Which is, Israel is going to get a king today.

Is that good news or bad news?

Does God like it that Israel has a king, or does God not like it that Israel has a king?

Would someone come in and just say king, bad, or good?

That's not what happens.

Instead, we see a king selected who the king himself is incredibly uncertain.

He's very uncertain of his position and his call to be king.

But through that, God establishes an absolutely certain kingdom.

So I'm I need to sniffle, but I think it's gonna be gross.

I just swallowed, that's even grosser.

We're all in this together.

It was a courtesy sniffle avoidance.

All right.

It would have been if I didn't comment on it.

All right.

Uncertain king and a certain kingdom.

So let's go ahead and look at this coronation ceremony when Saul is selected.

1 Samuel 10, 20 through 22.

It says, then Samuel brought all the tribes of Israel near.

And the tribe of Benjamin was taken by Lot.

So Samuel brings all the tribes near, they cast lots, which is a tradition lost to the church at this point, but it was a typical way of making decisions that would demonstrate God is the one who's doing the deciding.

Because there is not a lot cast in the lap that God doesn't determine its place.

And so they cast lots and it lands on the tribe of Benjamin.

So from twelve, we narrow down to one tribe.

He brought the tribe of Benjamin nearby its clans.

And the clan of the matrites was taken by lot.

So I don't know how many clans there were in the tribe of Benjamin, but now we're narrowed down to one clan in God's selection of the king.

And Saul, the son of Kish, was taken by Lot.

So, three times it is narrowed by the selection of God, and it arrives at this person, Saul.

But when they sought him, everyone's gathered, he could not be found.

So they inquire again of the Lord.

I don't know if they cast lots this time, or if Samuel was just like, hey, God, uh, I'm up here with everyone, and we cast lots, and you said Saul, but he's nowhere to be found.

Anyway, God responds in this hilarious way, where they inquire of the Lord, is there still a man to come?

And the Lord said, God said, I want this on a coffee mug.

Behold, he has hidden himself among the baggage.

The God they are rejecting, they inquire of to learn the location of the king they are choosing.

And that God says, Behold, he is hiding.

He's hiding among the baggage.

This is comical.

I mean, it it actually is funny.

And they they have to go get Saul, and they're like, hey, we cast lots.

I don't know if you heard, you're the king now.

And uh it's this strange moment where we see Saul's hiding, and in it we uh we see this characteristic of Saul revealed that actually, if we follow the introduction of Saul, has been hinted at in all sorts of ways this particular characteristic of Saul, which is his self-consciousness.

So let's back up a bit and we'll look at how Saul is introduced.

The introductions of characters in scripture are really important because these are histories, but just like any history, it's the details of what happened are selected in order to make a particular point.

And so the way that Saul is introduced is in chapter 9 of 1 Samuel through this very weird story where we pick up and Saul and his servant are looking for the donkeys that they lost.

That's the way Saul is introduced.

It is comical.

Um there another way to say it is the first time we meet Saul, he lost his donkey.

Sometimes kids say here.

So you know.

So him and his servant are out looking for the donkey, and Saul says to his servant, Look, soon my dad's not gonna care about the donkey, he's just gonna care about us.

So maybe we should just head back.

And the servant says, You know, there's a man in the town over named Samuel, Samuel, and he's a prophet of the Lord.

He's a seer.

I bet he could tell us where the donkeys were.

Which just shows you how useful prophets were back then.

They're very useful.

And they, and Saul, uh, ever the helper says, Yeah, but we have nothing to bring him.

Uh, and we'd have to make an offering to him.

Otherwise, it would be incredibly rude and embarrassing to show up with just this request.

And the servant, uh, and Saul says, I don't have anything to bring.

And the servant, Saul's servant, the guy who works for Saul, says, All right, I can sponsor this trip.

I've got a couple of coins, and uh I'll go ahead and pay the man.

So uh we see our brave, fearless king rise to the occasion.

And uh Saul, uh they approach Samuel, and Samuel had been told by the Lord that Saul would be king, and then when Samuel sees Saul coming, uh the Lord tells Samuel again, that's Saul.

He's the one who you are to anoint as king.

He's my selection for king.

And so uh Samuel approaches Saul, he gives them a, well, uh actually, uh at their first introduction, Samuel says this.

He says, As for your donkeys that were lost three days ago, don't set your mind on them, for they have been found.

Good news.

And then he says, and for whom is all that is desirable in Israel?

Is it not for you and for all your father's house?

It's quite a transition.

For whom?

Who will who will possess all that is desirable in Israel?

The land, the soldiers, the glory of the Lord's chosen people.

For whom, for whom will possess that?

Is it not for you and for your father's house?

What an incredible thing to say.

And it makes Saul, rather than honored, it makes him immediately uncomfortable.

Saul responds in this way.

He says, Am I not a Benjaminite from the least of the tribes of Israel?

And is not my clan the humblest of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin?

Why then have you spoken to me in this way?

Saul immediately moves to the normal comparison that he's used to making, the story that he has probably told himself his whole life about himself, which is I'm from the smallest clan in the tribe of Benjamin, the smallest tribe.

My life will be of no account.

And yet he's told by Samuel that the whole kingdom will belong to him.

This demeanor in Saul is expressed only further when he is hiding among the baggage when he's finally made king.

What we see in that moment is his perspective on himself hadn't really changed.

Now, if we were to diagnose this now, I think we would say Saul has a lack of self-esteem.

And that's the type of diagnosis that has built into it a cure, which is if you have a lack of self-esteem, then you need to have your self-esteem built up.

You need to think more highly of yourself.

Don't tell yourself that story that you're from the smallest clan, from the smallest tribe.

Pick other attributes yourself about yourself and tell yourself that story, like how tall you are.

In Saul's case, he's very tall.

He can reach all sorts of things.

But self-esteem isn't what is required of Saul.

For him to be present when he's anointed as king.

He didn't need to consider himself at all.

Here's what unfolds.

Samuel asked the servant to go forward and he anoints Saul in secret.

This is before the coronation ceremony.

He anoints Saul secretly and he says, You will be king over Israel.

He explains the whole thing.

And he says, Look, this anointing is gonna be confirmed for you.

He basically says, in action, he doesn't say this, like, look, you don't even need you don't even need to take my word for it.

Here's what's gonna happen.

You are going to leave here, and two men are going to assure you that your donkeys have been found.

They're gonna inform you where those donkeys are.

Then you're going to encounter another two travelers at this other place, and they will give you a bread offering that they have with them.

They'll give it to you.

Even though you aren't a high priest, you, as this now honored person of the Lord, will receive this offering of bread.

And then, third, you will pass by a group of prophets who will be singing and prophesying to the Lord.

And the Holy Spirit will fall on you, and you will begin prophesying in the same way that they are prophesying.

All three things take place.

Saul is given an incredible confirmation of his calling, one that we would dream of having.

Paul, excuse me, Saul required no self-esteem in order to move into the position of kingship.

What he required was faith in God's calling.

All he had to do to move into the position of king was not to consider himself more highly or to consider himself more at all.

That simply wasn't necessary.

What he had to do instead was doubt the story that he had been telling himself through his whole life and consider what God says and what God is doing is more important.

It transcends what I think about myself.

In order to trust God, he must doubt himself.

And this is where we uncover.

When we see the confirmations that Saul was really given, this is where we uncover what the root of his insecurity is.

It isn't an accurate self-knowledge that results in a due humility.

It's a pride and an arrogance towards the Lord.

And you can trust that I'm going to equip you to be in that role because I'm the one who called you to it and confirmed you in it.

And instead of moving into those challenges and moving into this next phase of his life that he was being called to, Saul remains in the story that he would rather tell himself.

He says, you know, the judgment that ultimately matters to determine who I am is my judgment.

And I lost the donkeys.

And I my servant had to pay.

And I'm from the least of the tribes, I'm from the least of the clans in the least of the tribes.

And I know my judgment on me.

I'm gonna trust that.

Forget what the Lord says.

It wouldn't matter how many confirmations he was given.

Do you think from the baggage he could hear Samuel cast lots and it come down to him?

And then hear the Lord say, Behold, he's hidden among the baggage.

Everything he could possibly need to know what role he was being called into, he knew.

And he doubted moving into it because of his own arrogance.

His insecurity is not humility, it's pride.

What Saul doubts is this function that's really a structure of Christianity.

This is really a structure of our faith.

It's built in.

And it's this fact of God that Augustine, I think, sums up most clearly.

And I couldn't find the original Augustine quote, but Calvin basically just quotes Augustine all the time.

So I found Calvin quoting Augustine.

So this is third hand and about Seventeen hundred years removed.

He says, God orders what we cannot do, that we may know what we ought to ask of him.

Now, here's the critical point he makes.

Faith acquires what the law requires.

So here's what's true of God.

What God asks of us, who God calls us to be, he gives to us.

Saul need not look to himself at all to move into this position of king.

When he does that, he's doubting this fundamental reality of God, which is what he asks of you, he gives to you.

What the law requires, faith acquires.

What Saul ought to do, what Saul should have said, the demeanor that Saul should have taken is look, I lost the donkeys.

I couldn't find them.

I couldn't even spot our time with the prophet who could tell us where they are.

My servant had to do that.

I'm not very forward thinking.

I'm tall, but it's uncomfortable.

It helps, prevents me from hiding like I'd like to.

I am from the smallest clan of the smallest tribe.

I know that I should not amount to anything, but who cares what I think?

God showed me that this is the role that he has called me to.

And who am I to doubt him?

Who am I to put my opinion over against his?

This may seem really distant because you didn't cast lots to end up where you are, maybe.

No judgment.

Just kidding, I would definitely judge that.

But there are so many responsibilities, things that you're uniquely called to in your life, that are so self-evidently confirmed by God.

Tomorrow morning you'll wake up and you'll have a job that you have to go to.

It's yours.

It's been given to you.

And there'll be problems there that will be yours.

No one else is called to them.

You could cast lots all day and it would just fall on you.

Because who else could handle these problems?

They're only yours.

You have children.

And the responsibility of raising them falls on you as their parents.

You have a marriage that needs to be tended to.

And the only way that marriage stays healthy is if you are engaged with it.

There are injustices and issues that you see in the world.

And when you bring them up with other people, they don't really seem to see them like you do.

And that's because if you're honest with yourself, you know that that that's probably yours.

And yet we don't step into them because we don't consider that God provides what he's asking for.

Instead, we try and build up our own self-esteem.

We try and convince ourselves that we're some great thing or we're like, you know, hustle culture or whatever.

I don't think there's anything more toxic than hustle culture.

That's just a way to trick millennials into working for no pay.

That's hustle culture.

Um the uh uh in so you try and build up this character that you that you see as the person, that's the type of person who would be able to accomplish this mission that's being called to, and it's all you looking at you.

You say, my problem is insecurity, and so I want to counter it with arrogance.

But you see, that's operating on the same principle of pride.

That's exactly right.

It operates on the same principle.

And so what we ought to do, what Saul ought to say, is to say, you know, it doesn't matter what I think.

What matters is what the Lord is doing, and I can trust him to provide all that I need for what he is calling me to.

Because it's all from him anyway.

Tim Keller uh wrote this tiny little book.

It was actually just a sermon, I think, and then they turned it into a book, uh, which happens to me all the time.

Where I finish and people are like, that needs to be a book.

So you can read it in like 45 minutes.

So it's really short, and you can buy it on like Kindle for like$2.99 or something.

I recommend you do.

And just take 45 minutes and read it.

It's called The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness.

And it's really a meditation on humility and what true gospel humility means.

Now, this is what we could have seen in Saul, and we don't.

But here's what true gospel humility means.

True gospel humility means, see, I told you I was gonna tell you that.

True gospel, sorry, I cracked myself up.

Uh true gospel humility means an ego that is not puffed up, but filled up.

This is totally unique.

Are we talking about high self-esteem?

No.

So is it low self-esteem?

Certainly not.

It's not about self-esteem.

Paul, who is the example that Keller is looking at in this book, Paul simply refuses to play that game.

He says, I don't care about your opinion, but I don't care that much about my opinion.

And that is the secret.

We try and counter our insecurities by making ourselves feel secure to ourselves.

It's still rooted in our judgment as the most important judgment in the world.

That still pits our judgment against God's, that still says to God's calling on you and his judgment on you, that it doesn't ultimately matter what he thinks.

What ultimately matters is what I think.

It's still self-conscious.

Instead, a true gospel humility doesn't consider our own opinions more highly than they ought to be considered.

We consider what our opinion would really mean before the God of the universe who created us, knows us, knows the ambiguities that we're dealing with, and yet calls us into them.

What we trust then, what fills up our identity rather than puffs it up, is to say, God, it doesn't matter what I think.

What matters is your calling.

And you're calling me to things that I don't feel even capable of moving into.

Honestly, I'd like to hide.

But it doesn't matter what I think.

Because you provide what you ask for, what you require you give.

And so I move forward not in self-consciousness or in self-confidence, but in confidence of what God says, which really is rooted in this doubt of ourselves, meaning we doubt the story that we're telling ourselves in order to trust the story that God is saying.

Now, to obey a calling like that from God, for Saul would obviously be this incredibly fearful thing.

He doesn't have the experience, right?

And he is called to all of a sudden be king of a nation that had never had a king before.

He's fulfilling a role that he'd never even had the opportunity to witness the existence of.

So that would be a fearful thing to trust God in.

But I think it's worth considering that what God calls us to in Christ is a far more fearful thing.

God in Christ says we wouldn't be heirs to all that is good in Israel.

He says we will be heirs of the world with Christ.

With Christ, we we are raised with him to rule with him.

Sharing responsibilities that seem reserved for angels.

It's so it almost feels so detached.

Which probably means we we need to meditate on that longer.

So that the weight of what we're called to would really settle in.

God is calling us to share in the establishment of an eternal kingdom.

And there are parts of that establishment that hinge on our obedience.

To move forward in the establishment of a kingdom like that that is so far beyond us, if we try and move into that with any sort of self-confidence, we're going to completely miss it.

Our self-confidence would only minimize what God is doing.

Rather, we ought to doubt ourselves and consider who God is calling us to be will be the ultimate verdict.

So we'll move back into our story.

In Saul, we see this very uncertain king.

But despite the uncertainty of this king, amidst that ambiguity, God establishes a certain kingdom.

So let's see how God does that.

This is following once they get Saul back.

Excuse me, in standing in front of people.

Then Samuel sent all the people away, each one to his home.

Saul also went to his home at Gibeah, and with him went men of valor, whose hearts God had touched.

But some worthless fellows said, How can this man save us?

And they despised him, and brought him no present, but he held his peace.

So they finally present Saul, and the reception by the majority is actually a celebration, because they see honestly how tall he is and good looking he is.

And they say, This is the type of king that we can be proud of before all the other nations.

But then things start to take this sort of turn, because God's selection of this king who looks like a king for all the other nations will not be called to act like a king from all the other nations.

If you remember, that was the particular request that the elders of Israel had made when they requested a king.

They said, We want a king like all the nations.

So at this inauguration of a king that God selected who looks like a king from all the other nations, what does Samuel do first?

But Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship, and he wrote them in a book and laid it up before the Lord.

These were laid out in Deuteronomy by Moses, and it was the way that the king of Israel ought to act if Israel so chooses to have a king.

And they are completely opposed to the normal operation of a king.

The king should not gather wealth for himself, the king should not build up for himself a large standing army.

The king should not recruit for himself slaves.

Instead, the king is meant to operate not for his own glory, but for the glory of the Lord who operates over the king.

That's the picture that Israel is supposed to have.

And so after that picture, we see people are actually frustrated.

Some worthless fellows say, How can this man save us?

And I think there's two things that they're picking up on there.

They're saying, with those types of constraints, if this type of king still has to live in a way that serves the Lord, so that the Lord still remains our king, how can he possibly save us?

And then I think they see this other thing as well, which is basically just agreeing with Saul, which is, look, he's hiding.

How can that guy save us?

That's the choice.

And you see, they're doing the same thing that Saul is doing.

God chose Saul.

God chose him for that position, to establish his kingdom.

And look, that looks like a strange decision.

From the outside looking in, that seems like the opposite of the way that you would want to establish this kingdom, this certain kingdom through which you promise to bring the salvation of the world.

I wouldn't choose Saul for my first go at it.

In order for them to trust the providence of God and the choosing of Saul, to trust the establishment of this certain kingdom, they would have to doubt even their assessment of Saul.

So an opportunity presents itself amidst this divided kingdom.

In uh the the what happens is uh this man Nahash, who uh was uh a king of the Ammonites, uh he had a calling card which was uh gouging out the right eyes of all the um men of the tribes that he conquered.

That was his thing.

Um that's kind of like he was the wet bandit uh of his time.

It was a harsher time.

And so when Nahash comes against this town, Jabash Gilead, uh the town sends for help to the rest of Israel.

They're literally weeping because they feel like they have no hope against the Ammonites.

And Saul hears the cries of the people and he rallies.

He takes an ox and he chops it up and he sends it to the corners of Israel, and he says, Look, if you don't come and rally so that we defeat the Ammonites with us, all your oxen are gonna be like this ox.

And it says, the fear of the Lord fell on the people.

The Lord attended his immediate action for the defense of the nation.

And the nation gathers and they handily defeat the Ammonites.

It says, There is not left one man standing next to another.

That means if you were in the Ammonite army, you ended the day alone.

And they celebrate this incredible victory.

Here's, I'll read what the scripture says.

In 1 Samuel 11, 12 through 15, it says, Then the people said to Samuel, Who is it that said, Shall Saul reign over us?

Bring the men that we may put them to death.

See, they're pretty united now.

They're like, remember when we were at the thing with the lots, and he hid for a little while, but it was fine.

And there were some people that were like, Let's get rid of Saul, let's bring them here and treat them like the Ammonites.

But Saul said wisely and humbly, Saul says, Not a man shall be put to death this day.

For today the Lord has worked salvation in Israel.

Then Samuel said to the people, Come, let us go to Gilgal and there renew the kingdom.

Says, you know, now that we've got everyone, everyone in the nation truly rallied around this king that God has established, and we've seen God work through him to establish the nation.

Let's renew this right now.

Samuel was never one to miss a party.

Remember the Ebenezer thing?

He was always celebrating the victories of God.

So the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal.

They sacrificed peace offerings before the Lord, and there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly.

This is Saul's one high point.

This is it.

And it comes from a real expression of his humility.

It's a moment where he says, I couldn't possibly have brought this defeat.

I merely called for action.

God rallied the nation, and then God defeated the Ammonites before us.

And so the nation is re-established under this clear victory that the Lord brought.

Here's what God has done.

The people have said, we reject you as our God.

We reject you, God, as our king.

Instead, we want a king like all the nations.

And God says, okay, I'll choose him.

And God chooses a king whose insecurity discredits himself.

And then God himself reads a law, his own law, that says, this king will be under my authority.

And then God, through that uncertain king, accomplishes a victory that rallies all the people together, and they give thanks not to the king, but to the Lord for their victory.

When we rejected God, and we said, You will not be our God and we will not be your people, through all this strange ambiguity, this through line of faithfulness that ties the scripture together, God establishes this unfailing certain kingdom, where there is no question in anyone's mind that the Lord is their God, although we have a king now, and they are his people.

See, with a God that works like that, with a God who, even amidst our own uncertainty, is able to establish and accomplish exactly what he purposed and exactly what he wills, what are we thinking when he calls us to actions of righteousness?

And instead of trusting him, we trust ourselves.

What makes us think we could piece together a story like this for the establishment of a kingdom so great as the kingdom of heaven that Jesus describes?

These stories should embolden us when we feel as though we are in the midst of a confusing, ambiguous, complicated life.

We should remember stories like this.

Where in the midst of that confusion and ambiguity, The steadiness comes from the faithfulness of God that's demonstrated not despite the ambiguity, but right through it.

So we look not towards ourselves, not to build up our own self-esteem.

Instead, we forget ourselves and remember the faithfulness of God.

Alright.

So we'll revel a bit in Saul's one high point.

Things don't get better for him.

Not to give away the ending.

Let's go ahead and take one question and then we'll have communion together.

No questions today.

Covered it.

All right.

That's right.

It means there are no loose ends.

Okay.

We're about to take communion.

This is an open communion in our church.

So that means you don't need to be a member of our church to participate, which is good because we don't have members right now.

When we take this communion, we remember Christ's broken body and his poured out blood for us.

And so in that, we remember our true King.

Our true King who, when he was called not to glory, but to suffering, wasn't hiding.

Instead, our true King heard the call of the Lord, and he answered it on our behalf.

That's our hope.

That our king, our real king, isn't like Saul, but the one who oversees us, who cares for us.

He answered the call, even when it was to his death, that we might be saved.

So we'll remember that.

We'll praise him.

We'll worship him.

We'll move forward in a confidence that isn't a self-confidence, but it's a confidence that if he didn't even spare his own son, what would he hold back from us that's good?

So with that, let's pray.

Father, I so often go to the Bible in daily devotions, just hoping that it will be a respite from the ambiguity of life.

But instead, it often matches it.

Father, I pray that you would teach us to see that through line of your faithfulness, both in Scripture and in our own lives.

That we might have hearts that are able to sit in the midst of ambiguity and not think I'm able to be confident because I know the real story here.

Because how impossible is that from our limited perspective.

But to sit and confidently say, I can be comfortable amidst this ambiguity because I know the character of the God who called me into it.

And I don't need to see the end from the beginning to know that he is faithful.

And so I'll doubt myself in the story that I tell myself about myself to move into the faithfulness that he has called me to.

Because I know that he will never abandon us.

To be lost in confusion forever.

But that in the midst of these things, he's weaving together a story far more glorious than we could imagine.

Father, I pray that you would give us faith in those promises.

That we wouldn't be puffed up but filled up by the promises you have made.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.