Game of thrones

1st Samuel chapter 18. And I'm going to be reading from the uh first 16 verses of the chapter this morning. As soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David. And Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father's house. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David and his armor and even his sword and his bow and his belt. David went out and was successful wherever Saul sent him. So that Saul set him over the men of war. And this was good in the sight of all the people and also in the sight of Saul's servants. And as they were coming home, when David returned from striking down the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing to meet King Saul with tambourines, with songs of joy and with musical instruments. And the women sang to one another as they celebrated, "Saul has struck down his thousands and David his 10 thousands." Saul was very angry and the saying displeased him. He said, 'They have ascribed to David 10 thousands, and to me they've ascribed only thousands. What more can he have but the kingdom? And Saul eyed David from that day on. The next day, a harmful spirit from God rushed upon Saul, and he raved within his house while David was playing the liar, as he did day by day. Saul had his spear in his hand, and Saul hurled the spear, for he thought, "I will pin David to the wall." But David evaded him twice. Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with him. But he had departed from Saul. So Saul removed him from his presence and made him a commander of a thousand. And he went out and came in before the people. And David had success in all his undertakings, for the Lord was with him. And when Saul saw that he had great success, he stood in fearful awe of him. But all of Israel and Judah loved David, for he went out and came in before them. This is God's word. We pray that the Lord would add to the reading of his word this morning. So the title of this series is Game of Thrones. And uh it's I titled this really because it's our throne against God's throne. But maybe to back up before we get into it. So in the months after the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus, the New Testament church began to explode in Jerusalem. And the disciples would often go out into the markets and the temple courtyards and proclaim the word of God. And this also got a couple of the disciples at one point arrested uh for a healing and an uproar and commotion that had happened as a result of all of this. And they imprisoned them. And the council, the San Sanhedrin, the Jewish council of religious leaders, invited these men to stand before them. And they essentially said to them, "Stop preaching Jesus. Stop talking about him. Stop proclaiming him as the son of God. Stop saying that he lives." And the disciples quite simply just said, "You decide whether it is for us to obey God or to obey man." To obey God or to obey man. Well, the Sanhedrin wanted to do to these guys just like they did to Jesus. They wanted him dead. They wanted him dead. They wanted to quiet this. They wanted to stop and squatchch this movement that was happening and it was stirring the city up. So, they put the men out and a man named Gamma, which is recorded in the book of Acts, gave counsel to the Sanhedrin and he said this. He said, "If this thing is of man, it will eventually die out. It will fizzle out." We've seen this over and over and over. We've seen these heroes come up, these Messiahs, these Messiah figures come up and try to lead a military revolt or do something and it always fades. But if this is of God, then you will not be able to stop it and you will be fighting against God. And these words prove to be so true because the movement of God, God himself moving forth his kingdom and the proclamation of the gospel and the message of Jesus began to not only erupt throughout Jerusalem, but throughout Judea, throughout Samaria, and throughout the ends of the earth as it began to expand. So much so that like even with oppression and with the the Roman Empire having to recognize and respond and persecute and kill Christians, the church continued to thrive even against not just religious but government efforts to squatchch it. So much so that in the second century a Roman historian by the name of Tertullan once wrote, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." In essence, the more that you kill, the more that you feed and fuel this thing because God is just raising up more and more people to follow after Christ, to believe this gospel. Because the movement of God, the will of God, the plan of God, the reign of God cannot be stopped. And if you stand in its way, like Gamma Leil said, you may find yourself fighting against God, God's plan, God's purpose, God's people, God's throne. And so today, I titled this sermon Game of Thrones because we're going to see in this story Saul, who we've been looking at, as well as David. Two thrones, two people, two lives. Saul has been rejected by God. He has a throne, but it's really his own throne now, and it's not connected to the throne of God. And as God had promised, I will remove your throne from you. I am going to set up a new king and a new throne. And my plan is going to be working through that throne and that individual who I have raised up, who has a heart after me. and all of the efforts that we're going to see as God is going to throughout this passage be raising and blessing and bring about the prominence and ultimately the plan and the throne of the future king of Israel. And the guy that thinks he's going to hold on to the throne, who by the way will now be resisting God's throne, resisting God's plan, resisting God's purpose, will find himself diminishing. and he will find all of his efforts to thwart that to stop that to be fizzling out, to be failing, and even in some ways to actually be working into God's plan to bring about his purpose. And so, as we look at that today, we're going to see that ultimately God is establishing David's throne and he's rejecting Saul's throne, God's rule. And maybe just a mention for all of us because these can kind of feel like royal things that are far removed from us. But you know, we all have a throne. We all in some ways were created by God. We have this free will that he gave us. And in in certain ways when God created Adam and Eve, he called them to to rule and to reign as his ambassadors, as people empowered and blessed by God, to be fruitful and to multiply throughout all of creation. never to disconnect their role and their rule and their throne and their individual lives from ultimately the rule and the kingship of God. They ruled as emissaries and ambassadors connected to that. And when Israel is set up with a king, that king is supposed to in many ways operate in that same way, bringing justice, bringing blessing, bringing prosperity, bringing all order and rule and law and order to the land. Because that's ultimately how God wants things to be operating according to his justice and his plan and his reign in the land. And in that same way, we in our own individual lives, we have that autonomy, but it's never to be disconnected from God's plan, from God's throne. And in the moments of life, because we know this, because we've all fallen short of the glory of God, we can take our autonomy in our throne, and it can we can step out in a way where we are not going to align it with the will of God. This is my life. I'm going to live it the way that I want to live it. I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to seek my own happiness, my own truth, my own good, and never really acknowledge who gave us that life, who gave us that freedom, who gave us that authority, who gave us all of the the blessing, who made us, who created us. And it's never disconnected from God. And if we disconnect it, we find that like unplugging a lamp, our life just begins to lose its life, begins to go out, begins to diminish. So, as we look at things today, we're going to look at why God is no longer with Saul, how God is with David, how does Saul respond to this, and how it could have all been different. So, let's take a look today as we look at it. First part is why God is no longer with Saul. And we ultimately see that Saul rejects God's plan. Uh if you look back in chapter 13 and 15, so in in chapter 13, we have this scene just to recap and bring us forward of what we've been studying and thinking about up to this point in the life of Saul. And uh you see this really uh key moment. Saul was given a command in chapter 13. wait for Samuel to come to offer the sacrifices to God. And and therefore, when he offered the sacrifices, this always happened. Go. He would inquire of the will of the Lord and he would deliver to the king. This is what we need to do. This is what God wants us to do. This is how he wants us to fight the battle or not to fight the battle. Just watch because God's going to do it for us. But Saul decides in his own way like, "Hey, people are leaving. Things are getting finicky and it's at the last final hour and I need to do something." And so the the abandoned ship at the last minute and disobys the will of the Lord. And then there's this encounter where Samuel meets with Saul. And this is what he says. And Samuel said to Saul, "You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the Lord your God which he commanded you. For then the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart. And the Lord has commanded him to be a prince over his people because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you. So already there's this foretelling through Samuel that the Lord is going to disconnect your throne because you've disconnected it from God. He's disconnecting you and your throne. And your kingship is not going to be connected to God's kingship because you've already made that choice in your own life. We move forward to chapter 15. Same deal. Saul's given a very clear command. This is what the Lord wants you to do. He wants you to go in and he wants you to strike the Amalachites. He wants you to destroy all of them. All of this plan he's supposed to do. But Saul gets creative because it says that he feared the people. He feared the people more than he feared God. And he needed to keep his throne established. And he didn't look to God to establish that throne anymore. He looked to himself. What do I need to do? I need to please everybody. I need to make everybody happy. And in that desire, in that deception in his own life, he decided to modify the plan of God and make up his own plan. And so he could appease the people and you know still technically appease God and do what he needed to do because God ultimately for him is like a puppet just you know somebody here when he needs good will but not ultimately activating his not life not establishing his authority and his kingship. He looks to the people for that. He looks to his own hands for that. And this is what he says in this moment. This is a couple conversations as this really dynamic conversation plays out with Samuel and Saul in chapter 15. He says, "Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king of Israel." And this is where he says, "To obey is better than sacrifice, Saul." And he drives this message. And then a few verses later, it says that as Samuel turned to go away, Saul seized the skirt of his robe and it tore. You get this imagery of like Saul in that moment thinking, "Man, I just tore the guy's shirt and he's holding the fabric there, Samuel looking over his shoulder at him and he says, "The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and he has given it to your neighbor of yours who is better than you." And so once again, we have this promise by God. Something's coming, Samuel. I am reject Saul because I am rejecting you because ultimately you've already rejected me. You've modified the plan. You've rationalized. You've never repented. You're you're always like, well, you know, I had a good reason this was going on. And he's always pointing to everything else and saying, "This is the reason I had to disobey. I had a good reason for it." Instead of just submitting to the will of God, to obeying, to looking to him, to no matter what the circumstances are, to say, "I will commit myself." God is the one who establishes me. God is the one who I need to trust. God's throne is ultimately the one that I I should be bowing to. It's not that I establish my own throne. The ultimate throne is God, God's plan, God's reign. And mine will never work unless I will be honest with myself and the people around me. Because if I will not be honest, if you will not be honest in your own lives about the the state of your heart or about your actions, then you cut yourself off from the opportunity of grace. You cut yourself off from God's grace when you reject and will not give the opportunity to just repent, to turn to the Lord. And so that's what Saul has done, you know, and really what Saul ultimately is in this, he is what what many have coined in the last couple decades is a is what they call moral therapeutic deism.  This is this is a sociological term that has been established. And ultimately the idea of this is is that God made the world and the goal of my life is to do whatever I really want but to try to be a good person because God wants us to be good people. And ultimately I can call on God when I need him but he's not actively involved in my life. And if I'm good and I play by the rules at the end of the day I go to heaven. So God is kind of over there in a corner. He's there when I need him, but he has nothing to do with the everyday events. He's not one that I call upon regularly unless things are a little bit shaky and I feel like I need that good luck. I need that blessing in that moment. And otherwise, God has no role, no play in his life. That's the life of Saul. Saul in essence is a deist. God wound up the world. You know, I kind of throw a bone to him every now and then, but there's no relationship. There's no bowing the knee to God. He keeps up the pretenses of a religious person, but his life is not devoted to the Lord. And Samuel sees it clearly and points it out. There is no obedience. There is no relationship. In fact, there is no heart after me. So, I'll go out there and I'll find someone who has a heart for me. So ultimately, God no longer is with Saul and he's rejected Saul. And we can do the same thing in our own lives. We can set up our own throne, our own truth, and we can kind of live our own lives, do our own thing, kind of whatever makes me happy. I want to live the way I want to live. And you know, every now and then I call on God when like, oh, I'm really I'm concerned about this medical thing or something's going on. And otherwise, God plays no role in our life. We don't invite him into moments of worship. Our lives are not submitted to him. We don't seek him for how we should live to look to him for who we are and what it means to live and how we best serve him each and every day. There's nothing about God being invited into our life. But you know, with God, it always is personal. Paul said, "Christ who died for me and gave himself for me. I am crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but I live now for the one who gave himself, who loved me. It's always personal. God came to show us what he is like in Christ. He came to relate to us. He's not a God that wound up the universe that's far away, but one that wants to enter our lives daily. And he invites us into that same rhythm and worship and and relationship with him. Because if we don't, and this is what we find with Saul, if you say, "My kingdom, I'm going to do what's happen to me, and yeah, I'll throw you a bone and call on you every now and then. You know, maybe I'll show up at church every now and then, but otherwise, I'm going to live my life the way I want to live it. This is my life." God says, "Then you can go your way. You can have your life, but that's not a good life. It's not a happy life." In fact, the words of CS Lewis were once like this. He said, "There are two kinds of people in layered life. At the end of their life, there are those who God who say to God, thy will be done." And then there are those in life at the end of their life who God says to them, "Thine will be done." You can go your way. You can live your life, but it won't be connected to the ultimate life, the ultimate authority, the ultimate throne. There's no meaning in that. And we're going to see what happens to a life when it begins to turn and reject that and what happens in the midst of that. And I wonder how many of us can sometimes fall into that trap of dism. We can kind of begin to sort of distance ourselves from God. We live our lives. We're going about our daily activities, but less and less we can call upon the Lord. And there's such a need in our own lives to maybe just wake up and ask, "Is he personal? Do we remember that he died for me? He gave himself for me. His mercies are new every morning. He wants me to be walking in fellowship with him. And that ultimately my life and how I live in that reign and that throne. It's got to align with God's and not just be me over here in a corner doing my own thing. David, we don't know a lot about David up to this point, but we do know from the text that it's told us as we've been studying Samuel that he has a heart after God. that God has looked on his heart and that he's seen something about the heart of David. And so the Lord is with David. That's what we're going to be looking at is how God is with David. And we can see right here for a couple things. Number one, the text literally says the Lord is with him. Three different occasions, right? Saul is looking out and he can see very evidently that the Lord is with him. And and you know, just as I mentioned, the Lord is not only with him, but he as he goes out and has all of these victories and all this blessing, you know, he brings just this real great rejoicing and joy and blessing. As I thought about it this week, every every time David fights a battle, everybody notices something about him that's different than the rest of the armies and the rest of the generals in Saul's army. He stands out. The text even talks about that. And I thought, you know, this is in such a contrast even to the life of Saul. Saul goes out into battle and you remember one of the stories. He literally tells everybody, "You can't even eat until this battle's done with." Guys are like starving to death. You know, everybody's like desperate and tired and weak and falling apart. This is how Saul leads. He drains the people. He leaves them empty, broken, struggling. David goes out and everybody feels energized. It's a completely different way of leading. A complete different kind of leadership that takes place in this. And you can see very clearly in this text in just different ways that God is with it. And one of them is actually going to be in verses three and four where David and Jonathan enter into covenant with one another. It actually says in 1st Samuel 18:es 3 and 4, then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as in his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of his robe that was on him and he gave it to David and his armor and even his sword and his bow and his belt. Now, this is a very striking and remarkable thing that just happened. And if you've uh if you've ever read or studied ancient near east covenant traditions and scholars debate because you can look at different traditions, but there's all some similarities here. Anytime you enter into that kind of covenant where somebody starts handing over their clothing, they're essentially saying my life for your life. You are as I am. Like I'm getting and like think about this. the guy's sword. This guy is the heir to the throne of Israel. And he's like, "Here's my clothes. Here's my sword. Here's my belt." Like, he's giving him his very things. And some Bible commentators will even debate and say he's actually in some ways hinting that he's giving him the throne, the heirship to the throne. There's something about this act that it's it's it's unheard of to do what Jonathan was doing. You just didn't do something like this. There's almost like this act of abdication. But at the very least, the very least, we know that Jonathan loves David so much so that he not only enters into a covenant, but a special kind of covenantal relationship where their lives are bound together and this like bond of friendship, this bond of friendship together. And it's just a remarkable scene of the blessing of God happening even through Saul's own household. God's moving the heart of his own son, the heir to the throne, moving him to be in covenant with the future king of Israel, you know, and so even Saul's own house is sort of leaving. We're going to see this also in the next the end of the chapter with McCall. McCall Saul's daughter loves David and she winds up marrying, entering into marriage covenant with David. And you have this remarkable thing taking place where all of Saul's house and all the people are going to David. Everybody's moving towards David. loving David, his kingdom, his throne in essence is building and God is showing and tipping the scales in that direction. Um, we also see that throughout this that there is an evasion. You know, Saul is scheming in so many ways and he's plotting and we're going to look at that in just a minute here. But through all this, God is protecting. He protects David when Saul hurls the spear at him. He protects David when you know there's peril. He protects David when there is plotting and then there is scheming and all sorts of different ways that the Lord is showing himself to be moving on David's half behalf. Um in verse 14 and in a couple other places actually four times in the chapter it says that David was successful successful in all the ways that he went. And ultimately that word sakal is is this word for like wisdom that that David behaves in a certain way with wisdom and with skill and with success. He has a certain air about him a certain way that he carries himself which just conveys through his heart and his love for God and his service to God just the blessing of God is on him. But notice through this, one of the things that's so interesting is that David's mostly the passive recipient of this. David is not angling for the throne. David's not doing anything special. We don't even know a lot about David. He doesn't talk a lot in this passage. The one time that he does talk, we actually see humility is the only thing that we see kind of revealed through David. The other times he's just being obedient. Saul says, "Go over here." And he goes fights these battles. He goes and does what he's supposed to do. He just operates in the realm that God has called him to. And yet we just see that everywhere he goes and everywhere he steps, the blessing of God is just moving in his life and everyone can see it and everyone notices it that God has chosen David. David walks in relationship with God. He honors God and so his throne is being established by God. And let let me just kind of maybe one little piece right there because we see David is not doing much. God is just doing everything through his life because he's connected his life and his heart to God. And through that, we see how the Lord is operating and establishing his purposes in David's life. Proverbs reminds us, commit your way to the Lord and your ways will prosper. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he shall set your path straight. All these different verses that remind us, connect to the Lord. Bring him into the affairs of your life. And sometimes if you feel in life, I don't know what to do. I'm worried. Especially I remember in younger years and maybe this is advice for people that are younger, like as you're debating in life and you're thinking like what what do I do? What kind of decisions do I make? And it all feels like it sort of weighs on me and what if I get it wrong? What if I miss God? What if I take the wrong step? You know that the thing that we can we can rest in and that you can rest in is invite God in. This is just a bit of practical wisdom here. Invite God in to those moments. Ask of him. Inquire of him. Pray. Learn to discern. But even if you miss it, know that there's this thing called the sovereignty of God. God can work in those who honor him. And he can take even their their actions where they may miss and work it back into his plan. Because God works for his people. If you'll acknowledge him and honor him, work and seek him that even if we so you don't have to feel like, oh, I'm going to make the wrong decision. I may go the wrong way. If you're seeking the Lord, he has such a way of grafting you back into his plan. You know, one other thing that I would I would say is um because we just see here God working on the behalf of his people. If you find yourself lonely at times, if you find yourself hardpressed and you find yourself, you know, like where is God? Is he operating? Will he look out for me? And I feel sort of like I have these problems in my life. Does he care? And yet we see that David so passively isn't trying to do anything and God's just working and operating in his life. And in our lives, in that same way, when you follow after the Lord and you honor the Lord, you can know and trust that he is working things for your good. He's working things according to his plan. Don't reject God. Don't set up your own throne outside of his throne. And you can just submit and just like a lamp being plugged up, see that God will supply your needs. Maybe it's a need of of loneliness or needs of like I don't know what my goal or purpose in life is. And just know that God when you are connected to God, you are connected to his plan and his work and his ruling in your lives and God will put the right people or the right pro provision in your life to meet your needs. Now Saul though, Saul's an angller. Saul knows he's rejected. He he knows it says in the text he knows that the Lord is not with him. How does Saul respond in this? Saul ultimately works for David's demise. He is going to be the active agent in here. You know, David's more of the passive agents. Saul is working. Saul sees the blessing of David. He's eyeing David. The envy of Saul is on David. And so, he's going to be actively trying to find ways to subvert the will and the work of God in this passage. And we see right here, Saul grows envious and distrustful of David as they make great songs about him. And you know, they've memorialized him in history now. And it says that the next day in verses 10 and 11, we see that Saul is raving. It says in in the next day, a harmful spirit from God rushed upon Saul and he raved within his house while David was playing the liar as he did day by day. Saul had a spear in his hand and he hurled the spear for he thought I will pin David to the wall. But David evaded him twice. So we see right here that he's got a clear way of of answering this. I'll just kill David, right? And the raving thing super interesting because it actually in the Hebrew it's the same word for prophesy. So there's this weird picture of Saul going through the house like almost like raving and prophesying. You almost have to kind of wonder. This is just s pure conjecture, but if he's prophesying like that that the the will of the Lord, you know, that like his kingship will end, God will raise up a new king, I have no idea. But I do have to kind of wonder in this because I thought it was so fascinating that that word na'vi in the Hebrew got used and that we translate as prophesy or in this case a very much more rare case we can translate as uh as raving. But Saul, this is his response. And then so he raves through the house and then Saul begins to scheme and find ways to put David to death. It says in verses 13 and 14 that uh let me look at it real quick here. Actually didn. It says that Saul removed from his presence and he made him a commander, David, a commander over a thousand. And he went out and came in before the people. And David had success in all his undertakings for the Lord was with him. And so once again, you know, Saul has a plan. I'm going to put David in harm's way. I'm going to send him out there into the battlefield. He's going to get killed by the Philistines. My hand won't be against him. This gets mentioned several times in the text. And yet, we see once again that David, the the the scheme of Saul is to kill David, to destroy David. And God says he actually works it and turns it on its head and winds up bringing blessing and winds up actually causing it to be a successful event and just foiling the plans of Saul. Um we also see just this constant uh futility and scheming that happens in the life of Saul. So Saul schemes and plots you know he said so McCall he wants to offer McCall McCall loves David and he thinks perfect opportunity. I'm going to create this system and this scheme so that I can actually have David destroyed on the battlefield. And he starts having these these uh conversations. Saul thought, "Let me give him to him that she may be a snare for him and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him." And Saul commanded his servants, "Speak to David in private and say, "Behold, the king delights in you." Think about that. Like Saul's the king. Why is he whispering to his servants? You get this sort of image of like Saul going around and plotting and scheming in the corners. And you see that several times in this in this conversation. And the servant said to Saul, so they're coming back and they're reporting to Saul, right? And then then Saul said, "Thus you shall say to David." And he sends the servants back. And it's just this it's really this sort of sad, pitiful king who's sort of come down to just plotting ways. But this is the way Saul in many ways has entered into the game of thrones, the lies, the schemes, the attempts of murder. It's not a struggle for the throne. God ultimately is going to bring his throne. But here is here's Saul trying to find a way to destroy David to destroy and thwart the plan of God and he's caught in a game. And if you really begin to think about it, there's just such futility. In fact, Saul throughout this begins to see that it's not going to work. Saul begins to fear uh David in all of this as he sees that the Lord is with David. Says it three different times. Saul was afraid of David. Verse 12, because the Lord was with him, but he had departed from Saul. And when Saul, verse 15, saw that he had great success, he stood in fearful all of him. Uh verses 28-29. But when Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David and that McCall, Saul's daughter, loved him, Saul was even more afraid of David. So Saul was David's enemy continually. So here is his foiled attempts. David's growing in power. He feels restless and unable to do anything about it. He's trying to take control like he has in the past, trying to establish his throne, trying to make things happen, trying to thwart the plans of God and scheming and everything just gets turned on his head and to the point that there's frustration over everything that he tries. Saul's own house is leaving to David. Everybody in the nation loves David and Saul is left to what? His own throne. Got your own throne, Saul? But it's just you and everybody going away. And here he has left and he's fearful because he has no control. And how often in life when we wake up to these moments in our life and we feel anxiety, fear, when we realize we're not that autonomous, when we realize our vulnerability, and we're just left with our own throne, disconnected from God, and how that begins to cause us to fear and be terrified. Because when you're on your own, when you're disconnected from God, when you've rejected God and God has let you go your own way, that is a sad and lonely and pitiful place to be. And we see in Saul's own life that same evidence. Just pitiful. This man is the king of Israel. And yet he's down to scheming, trying to take innocent lives, holding his own daughter up his bait, plotting against an innocent man that has done nothing to try to take the throne in any way. Look at what Saul has become. Look what he's left with. loneliness and fear, you know, and and and after we and we can do this in our own life where we can take that that sort of sense of control and if we are not connected to the plan of God, if we are not constantly in fellowship with God, we can slowly drift where we begin to live our own life and it can leave us alone. It can leave us afraid. And if you ever feel fear in your own heart, always remember, reconnect to God. Invite him into those places. We're reminded in Philippians 4, right? Be anxious for nothing, but in everything through petition, prayer, and thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. And the peace that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. It's always about trust. You're going to trust your own hands. You're going to try to establish your own throne. Are you going to submit to the ultimate throne, to the ultimate God, and connect your life to that thing? Because if you do not, life becomes that game of thrones, trying to trying to find your own happiness, trying to find your own truth. And it disconnects you from who God made you to be, who he wanted you to be. And even for Saul's life, it could have been different. It could have been different time and time again. And even now at this place in the story, it can be different for Saul if Saul would just take a look at his life and what he's become. How this is sort of he didn't even want to be king in the first place. And now Saul is left here scheming and trying to destroy and offering up his family and doing all of these different things in life. And he's fearful and he's it just twists him. It's changed him. So it goes with us. When we go our own way, it twists us. It changes us because that's what sin does. It rejects God. It rejects God's way. It It's our way. We do our own thing and our human who we were created to be and the way we were meant to live and who we are, our identity, all of it just begins to get twisted and we begin to like not know who we are anymore and who God made us to be. And that's what's happening in Saul's life as he's not responding. You know, if he would just even in this moment as time and time again, if he would just be honest with God in this moment and just just just come before him and and recognize, you know what? Look, what have I become? What am I doing? What have I done in my life? Look at all this I'm doing. The scheming is frustrating me. I'm afraid I'm alone. And to recognize that and then to respond without pointing fingers at people and point to his own self. what have I done? And then to repent. Saul's always given false repentance, sort of make good show of things. But what if in the first time of his life, Saul would just be honest with God and be honest with himself and stop pointing the finger at other people? How would God have done differently? Maybe we know that God is gracious. Maybe he would have established Saul's kingdom. Maybe he would have turned things. Or maybe this. Or maybe he would have acted more like Jonathan and understood the will and the plan of God and just begin to let the peaceful transfer of power happen instead of the game of thrones. Saul's not a great leader. Maybe he would have actually been happier working on the farm again, not having to like scheme and plot, but just be happy with the life that God's given him instead of trying to hold on to his own life and his own power and his own control and all that's made him. just to release that to ultimately just repent before the Lord and invite the Lord's presence and like let the Lord go back to Samuel, inquire of the Lord and see how God might just make good of all that is so wrong in this text, so wrong in Saul's life. But Saul won't do it. And we can only wonder how things might have been different. We can only wonder, even for our own lives, when we fight against God, how it could be so different. And the goal and the challenge of life isn't just once, but over and over again to practice those rhythms of reflection and repentance. Where am I not trusting the Lord? Where am I setting up my own little kingdom? And I'm just fueling that with what I need to keep it going. And these small ways that we kind of don't give up and surrender these corners of our heart to God. And that's where sin always is. Even in Christ, oftentimes our life doesn't have any big sin, but it's these corner pockets in our life that we've not surrendered over to the Lord. And that's where the enemy will so subtly come in. And that pride, that greed, that lust, and we don't even see it, but it takes root in our heart. We're so called to practice, reflect, pray, let the Lord search your heart. Be honest with him. Be honest with all of the corners of your heart so that you might submit it all to the Lord. Have you submitted your throne to God's? Or are there corners of your heart that are still autonomous? Practice those rhythms of reflection and repentance. Are you anxious about the power shifts and plots of the world? the powerlessness of the church in the west, the dechurching and decristianizing of the nation. In the end, God's way is stronger. He has a plan. And his way, and I always am reminded, his way is always more beautiful. It's always the answer to the story of the human problem. People run their way. Go your way. See where it will take you. See how it will end up in meaninglessness. See what it will turn you into. like Saul. See all the ways that will leave you unsatisfied, alienated, alone, fearful, it will leave you like Saul. And so the challenge for our lives is to reconnect, to trust God. Not to turn to power plays for control, but to ultimately pray and watch and trust the plan of God because he knows what he's doing. And are we connected to God? Because if we are connected to God, even our enemies become our brothers and our sisters. Jonathan and David should be enemies. But we're going to see throughout this text how God has just worked such cool reconciliation between the house of Saul and the house of David that will continue for generations. And the blessing of that when we're connected to God, God reconnects and makes peace even with our enemies. We leave the game of thrones because if you play the game of thrones against God, you will lose. You'll lose. But if you connect your life and your throne to God's throne and submit to him, you will succeed. You will succeed because the most successful life is the one that honors and loves and glorifies God and lives and abides in that and and God has his will and his purpose and his plan just working through you and in the lives of the people. God has so much for his people. So many ways in ordinary daily events that he just puts us together in our conversations of encouragement, of fellowship, of praise, of worship, even in a community of people that follow him. There's so much good. That's why we come together and we exalt and acknowledge the ultimate throne, the ultimate king of all kings. We're called to bow our knee in our throne to his throne. Is the Lord with you? Or more importantly, are you with him? Let's pray.