Actually, we weren't doing very well on that hymn, so Ernest wouldn't let us sing the rest of it. Isn't it good to see Ernest up here leading us singing again? He did that years ago, years ago. So many years ago, most of you can't remember it. But it's so good to see up here again with all the enthusiasm and verve and excitement and so forth. We prayed for Ernest in his physical condition for years. And now he's all well and whole again, so we don't need to pray for him anymore. Well, good morning to you all. Good. Good. In all probability, that's the last time of the day you'll have to say that. What we want to do, Lord willing, this week is to talk about the life and times of David. Now if you've been saved very long, you've heard the story of David, you've studied the story of David, you've read the story of David, you've had it explained to you and expounded to you, and you say, oh, not again. So I'm going to quote to you the words of Peter, I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance. And one of the nice things about the word of God is totally inexhaustible. You can read it and read it and read it and read it, and you always find something in it brand new, and so we trust The Holy Spirit will do a work in us and for us and through us during the course of these days' activities if the Lord gives them to us. Now, we're starting out this morning in the first book of Samuel, chapter one. First Samuel, chapter one, and it's easy to find because it comes right ahead of second Samuel. First Samuel, chapter one, tonight when we come together, if the Lord gives it to us, We want to start reading in the sixteenth chapter of First Samuel. So if you want to do some homework this afternoon, you might want to read through First Samuel chapter sixteen and sort of refresh your memory and your mind with the things which are written therein. That's tonight, chapter sixteen, this morning chapter one, which means I have to preach through fifteen chapters this morning. And when I finish, we'll go to dinner or we'll go to supper or we'll go to breakfast tomorrow morning. But anyway, we'll just, and you see the theme of it, that's what I would like to use for a theme, is found over in the book of Acts chapter thirteen. This will sort of be our theme verse, Acts thirteen, verse thirty-six. Acts thirteen, thirty-six, Paul says, for David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep. That'll be our theme. implanted by the will of God into a certain generation. I believe that's what God does. I don't believe you and I just appeared on this worldly scene haphazardly, but I believe that we are here because this is where God wants us to be for some specific reason, hopefully, to serve the will of God as did David. Now, that's what we read back in Acts, Acts, verse thirty-six. And so with that in mind is our theme verse. Now we come back to first. the first chapter of First Samuel and try to determine what kind of a generation David was dropped into, what the sort of a situation there was there in. So we won't take time to read it, except as we go through, you're going to have to turn a lot of pages this morning if you'll follow along in these various scenes which seem to set this particular generation in which David appeared. For instance, we have in First Samuel chapter one, Verse number six, we start with the birth of Samuel. Samuel the prophet of the Lord is born, you remember, to a lady named Hannah, and for quite a while she was barren. She had no children, but her companion wife, I guess we'd have to say, Penina had several children, and Penina apparently became the antagonistic adversary to Hannah. and would chide her on the fact that she never had any children. And the husband of both of them, what was his name? Elkanah, good. So far you're with me. And he said, what's the matter with you? He said to Han, and she said, I don't have any children. And you remember what he said to her? He said, what do you want kids for? You got me. Now talk about male chauvinism. Didn't the wise man say that there's nothing new under the sun? Bless your heart, anything you want to find in the Word of God has been there for years, hasn't it? And people today think that they've discovered something new, and it's already been expressed in the Word of God generations ago. There's a fellow who goes around the country, probably several countries now, and he thinks he has invented the idea that a good positive attitude helps you to stay healthy and strong. And your Bible says a merry heart doeth good like a medicine. The Lord invented it. Not this guy, but he thinks this new and is brand new. And people say, you know, he's invented this sort of thing. No, he didn't. Many years ago, the word says the life of the flesh is in the blood. And we think the doctors of George Washington literally bled him to death because in those days, if a fellow was sick, you took some of his blood away. And if he didn't get better, you took more of his blood away. And first thing you know, he died. Shows how sick he was. You think, no, you literally bled him to death. That happened back in seventeen ninety-nine. If only they'd read the word of God. The life of the flesh is in the blood. You take a fellow's blood away, he's going to die. And God said that generations ago. Christopher Columbus sailors, you remember, were afraid they're going to sail off the flat side of the earth. And the Bible years ago said, He sitteth on the circle of the earth. If only today, in nineteen ninety-eight, people would get back to the Word of God, they would discover what God has said generations ago. And so we have the birth of Samuel coming along and the Lord answering her prayer, answering Hannah's prayers, you see. And her husband and I said, the first male chauvinist maybe, maybe Adam was, I don't know. coming long says, what do you want children for? You're blessed to have me as your husband. Well, wasn't she a wise wife? Remember what she said? She didn't say a thing. Wise wife. Wise wife. Now, I'll tell you, ladies, if you haven't found this out, one of the most fragile things in the world is the male ego. He may be built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he can have a male ego that's as fragile as can be. A while back, it came time for us to get another car. My wife said, we've always had a two-door automobile. She says, I think this time we need a four-door automobile because all of our friends are getting older. Wasn't that nice, you see? We're not getting older. All of you people are getting older. Wasn't that a gentle way of putting it? I said, you ought to run for office in Washington with that sort of diplomacy. Anyway, he comes along. First Samuel chapter one, you have that in verse number six. Her adversary provoked her. You have it over in verse number twenty-two, that same chapter. Verse twenty-two, Hannah went not up, for she said unto her husband, I will not go up until the child be weaned. Then I will bring him that he may appear before the Lord, and there abide forever. That's in verse number twenty-two. Now also you'll find that Hannah did something. We can't spend a lot of time on this, but Hannah had something here that every mother, I think, ought to pursue and to follow. She said, for instance, in chapter one, verse twenty-two, she reared her child with eternity in view. I will present him unto the Lord. Every mother should say that, shouldn't she? Every father should say that. I want the privilege of leading my child to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. I will present him to the Lord for as long as he lives, with eternity's values in view. Then you come over to chapter two of first Samuel, verse number nineteen. First Samuel chapter two, verse number nineteen. Moreover, his mother made him a little coat and brought it to him from year to year when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. Now, you know, this year, the coat's going to have to be bigger than it was last year. And next year, the coat's going to have to be bigger than it was this year. She's going to have to adapt her ministry to her son as he grows. And so the parent adapts his or her ministry to the child as that child grows. Now, you have the same thing. We won't take time to look at it. You have the same thing in Deuteronomy chapter number six. when it says you shall teach your children these things, when you're sitting down, when you're standing up, when you're walking in the way, and when you're lying down. You know, I haven't thought of anything else that we do. We're always in one of those four positions. So you'd come to the Lord there and do it Army Six, and say, well, Lord, you're talking about a seven-day-a-week, twenty-four-hour-a-day ministry to my family. And I think the Lord would smile a little bit and say, exactly, exactly. And so the word of God back there in Deuteronomy six, he says, when you teach your children these things, the word is, whet their appetite. Whet their appetite. Make sure that the kids or the grandchildren or the great grandchildren know what you're talking about. Know what you're talking about. I had the young people singing one night something about the do we need. Remember that old hymn? The do we need. And I said, I don't think these kids know what we're singing about. And I said, what's a mead? One kid says, that's like an ale. I said, well, yeah, but we're not singing about that. Another kid says, I think a mead is a meadow. Yes, exactly. Do the kids know what you're talking about when you read the Word of God to them? Do you take time to explain it? Do you take time to put it into their vernacular? The Lord Jesus Christ said, feed my lamb. One lady left our chapel of a Sunday night. We had a very philosophical and intellectual preacher. No, it wasn't me. You know that. And she said, it seems as if the Lord said, feed my giraffes. Everything was way up there, she said. I said, you didn't care for it? I should have left my Bible home and brought my dictionary, she said. Didn't you bring it down to where the lambs couldn't understand it? The Lord Jesus Christ said, suffer the little children. come unto me. And the word of God can be broken down so even the lambs can understand the canvas. So Hannah has this ministry to Samuel. Need to hurry along. You can also read about him in chapter two, verses six, seven, eight, and nine. But then you find as you come over into first Samuel chapter two, here now is the fall of Eli's house. Eli had two sons, Hophany and Phineas, guilty of immorality. After a while, Samuel has two sons. They aren't much better, you see. You kind of wonder why didn't Samuel learn about the family situation of Eli, but we're not into that question now in a particular way. So in First Samuel, chapter two, verse twelve and verse seventeen, we have those, the sons of Eli, were sons of Elio. They knew not the Lord. Verse seventeen, wherefore the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord, for men abhorred the offering of the Lord. Way back there in First Samuel chapter two. And it seems as if almost daily, dear friends, these days you read about some preacher who's into immorality or recently peddling drugs or beating some fellow, pistol whipping him. And you know what that does to people that you try to witness to about the things of the Lord. And it seems as if it's a rash of these things today. This sort of a thing and that sort of a thing. And you come way back here to First Samuel chapter two. For men abhorred the offering of the Lord. History really repeats itself, doesn't it? Human nature never changes. So we have the same thing back here in this section. Also verse number eleven. Al-Kaena went to Ramah to his house and the child did minister unto the Lord before Eli the priest. Verse number fourteen and he struck it into the pen and kettle and so on and so forth, all those other sorts of things mentioned there. Come along here to First Samuel chapter number four now. The fall of Eli's house. His sons couldn't continue on, and people despised the offering of the Lord because they didn't see those who professed to know the Lord living according to the teachings of the Lord. Sad state. Sad state. Then in chapter four, you have the loss of the ark. Loss of the ark. Folks were being, that is Israelites, were being beaten in battle, and they said, you know, we need some sort of a good luck charm. So they chose the Ark of the Covenant. And you come up to the nineteen hundred ninety-eight. I know folks that feel as long as they have their Bible, they're protected. I know a fellow that keeps his Bible on the dashboard of his car, because he says, as long as my Bible's on the dashboard of the car, I won't have an accident. I said, that's sort of a Protestant St. Christopher's medal. Well, call it what you will. But you know there's real danger in this sort of thing. It's a subtlety. It's a subtlety that I can go nine-thirty and sit around the table of the Lord and think I'm worshiping when my mind may be miles away. Friends, this is a subtlety that somehow we have a monopoly on God because I'm following certain forms and ceremonies in this other sort of thing. So the Ark of the Covenant, we'll use that for our good luck charm. And as long as we have that, then the Lord will not allow us to be defeated, but they were. And the Ark, you remember, was stolen. The Ark of the Covenant, the glory hath departed, as Mother said, just before she died. The Ark of the Covenant. And then the Philistines found it wasn't such a good thing having the Ark of Covenant in their camp either. They put it, you remember, in the house of Dagon, their God? Dagon, the fish God. And they came in the next morning and the fish god was knocked down. So they propped them back up. Wouldn't you be suspicious of any deity that you had to keep propping up? I think they should have had the light bulb come on after. And the same thing happened the next morning, didn't it? And your Bible says the only thing that was left was the fishy part. I think by that time I would have said there's something fishy here. If this deity or this that represents the deity of the Jewish folks... is more powerful than the deity. And they said, we better get rid of this thing. And so, remember they put it on a new cart? And they hooked two cows to it. They just give them birth to calves. And the cows went on ignoring their calves. That's the most unusual thing. Naturally speaking, isn't it? And they went back. And these are days, dear friends, when people are trying to put the Ark of the Covenant back on new carts. And we try to make things as easy as possible. And we try to make things as unsacrificial as possible for folks. I was up in the Midwest one time, and the elders were gathered around. I always like to mix with the elders, because you know whether or not you're going to get invited back again. And one of the elders said, you know, we've got to give the people what they want. And I said, sometimes you've got to give people what they need. And it was eight years before I was invited back to that place again. I thought I preached more truth in that one sentence than I would have if I'd gone there for one of those eight years. But these are days when we have to make it as palatable as possible. And I've been told, don't preach anything controversial. And I was beside myself to think, what's not going to upset somebody? You know, we won't get into that. Another place I was told, don't preach doctrine. I said, well... It's profitable. What is it going to preach if you don't preach it out? I said, what would I preach? I said, preach something practical, as if doctrine isn't practical, you see. Another place I was told, don't preach more than twenty minutes. I said, why? They said, because we have a very short attention span. I was told, again, don't preach anything deep because we don't like to think. So what do we do? We take the Word of God, and we try to adapt it to the age in which we live. And that's not the way it's supposed to work. Hebrews chapter four and verse number twelve says the Bible critiques us. We don't critique the Bible. And so here we have this sort of a thing, the Ark of the Covenant on the new cart, and you know that's not the way it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be carried by the priests themselves. Loss of the Ark. Terrible situation. Chapter four, verse number three, verses four, five, six, and seven. But then in chapter five, you have a burst of wonderful light because chapter five deals with the righteousness of God. Chapter number five of First Samuel deals with the righteousness of God. Philistines took the Ark of God and so on and so forth, this sort of thing. And here you have the controversy, as it were, between God and Dagon. And it comes as sort of a burst of light in the midst of all this immorality and and all the rest of the sorts of things in this particular way. The righteousness of God. Here's a little bit of a ray of light. And then you come to chapter seven and you have revival. Another little ray of light. Chapter seven and verses three, four, five, six and seven. First Samuel chapter seven. Verse three through seven. And I was impressed with a number of times you read the pronoun E. E. And I think that's indicative. I think it's a key to the whole situation that the revival that is done in this particular way. Chapter seven, verse three, Daniel speaks unto all the house of Israel saying, if ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and astra from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines and the people. So that's a good idea. That's what we're going to do when they did. And it sounds a lot like that we call the revival verse in Second Chronicles, chapter seven, verse number fourteen. And if you would be revived, you have to turn, you have to seek the Lord, you have to do all these other sorts of things, and that's what these people did. Isn't it amazing how as you walk along, things creep into your life of which the Holy Spirit does not approve? And when you have a revival, you're amazed under the light of the Holy Spirit, the things that he points out that need to be jenisoned, that need to be confessed. And it's an amazing thing. Young fellow named Hezekiah came along. He's just a young fellow, about twenty-one years of age, when he became king. And he said, the first thing we need to do is to cleanse the temple. Now the first thing we would do is have a big ball, have a big party, have a big gala, you see. He says, the needs of this nation right now are we need to be revived and get back to God. And that's quite a thing for a twenty-one-year-old fellow to say, and may his tribe increase. And that's what they did. They got revived. And the Levites were sent in, you remember, to the temple to cleanse the rubbish out of it. You say, well, if the doors were in such deplorable condition that they had to be repaired before they could be opened, how did all that rubbish get inside? But stuff accumulates, doesn't it? Now, if you want a very practical and homely description, when you go home or back to where you came from or are staying, look at the stuff that you've accumulated in your garage or in your attic or in your cellar. What do we save this for? I have no idea, you know. That old, dumb, old, white elephant with a clock in the middle that you've got to remember to get out when the people gave it to you, come to visit you, you know. Oh, put that right on the mantelpiece, this sort of thing. Rubbish accumulates, and you don't know how it got there. And revival is when the Holy Spirit puts his finger on these things and says, this needs to go, and this needs to go, and this needs to go. And that's what you have here in chapter number seven, because he is the preeminent one in this way. Now, of course, you come over here to chapters eight through thirteen, and you get into the Jewish monarchy. Because you remember the Jewish people came to Samuel and they said, you know, we want to have a king like the other nations. And you can write in nineteen ninety eight right over that. Because that's what congregations say today. We'd like to hear different men all the time. We want one man to come. We've had people left our assembly. and they've gone to some denominational church so that, well, the fellow told me once, he says it's a lot easier for me to write out a check on Sunday morning and help pay the salaries of some staff than it is for me to take my turn and spend four or five hours preparing a Bible study for prayer meeting. It's a lot easier for me to just pay somebody else to do it. He said, pastor, an associate pastor, and the minister of music, and the minister of education, and the minister of counseling, and the minister of all the rest of these sorts of things. And we lose people because of that, you see. But we don't think that's the New Testament way, do we? We don't think that's the way at all. I think there are more men in the assemblies, in the congregations, who know the Word of God, than in most denominational churches. And I tell you, there's a danger for us because we are... not retaining our reputation as being people of the book, dear friends, because many brethren are not studying the Word of God. We have to have some outside speaker come in because we don't have anybody locally that can effectively minister the Word of God. And that's a shame. That's a shame. A fellow came in a while back. He goes to one of our assemblies. He came in and And he says, you know, we had a fellow last week and he said thus and so when he told me to us, I said, do you believe that's right? No, I didn't think it was right, didn't sound right. He said, did you say anything to him about it? No, because he has a doctorate degree. I said, he must know more than I do or he'd be down there and I'd be up here. And this is a creeping sort of a thing. And so we have all scriptures given by inspiration of God and now some folks in our assemblies turn it around. And they'll read it this way. All Scripture given by the inspiration of God is inspired. Now, that's not the same thing. We've had people who said, do you believe the Bible is the Word of God, or do you believe the Bible contains the Word of God? Now, there's a subtlety. Do you believe the Bible is the Word of God? I believe it. I like that enthusiastic fellow who says, I even believe the cover. The cover says, Holy Bible. I even believe the cover. One fellow said, a skeptic said to him, certainly you don't believe this story about the whale swallowing Jonah. And our friend says, well, in the first place it doesn't say a whale. It says a great fish. And the guy says, you're begging the question. Do you believe it? And he said, I believe if my Bible had said Jonah swallowed the whale, I would have believed that. I like that sort of a person. And someone says, Phil, can you explain all those things? I said, no, I can't explain them. But if I could, it would simply prove the Bible had been written by somebody who's no smarter than I am. I like to find things in it that are very mystifying. And then I ask somebody, and I say, you don't know either, do you? No. You don't know either. That's the wonderful thing about the Word of God, and desire to covet that thing desperately, because we are living in a dangerous age, and there's a subtlety to it, and there's a softness to it, and there's a compromise to it, this sort of a thing. If we soft-pedal this and if we soft-pedal that, we can get more people in, you see. We can get more people in. And so we have this group, came to Samuel, and they said, we want to have a king like all the other nations have a king, and we're living that age today. We want to be like everybody else. And so we're speaking now or hearing now about an evangelical ecumenism. And that is we gather together, but you know you can't do this unless you give up something. Who's going to give up having the Lord's table every Sunday morning? We'd have to give it up because other people don't do it. Who'd have to give up some of the other things? We'd have to lose some of the most precious things that we enjoy in our assemblies. We'd have to give that up. And then somebody comes to me and says, but Phil, you know, we're all going to be together in glory. Yes, I know that. But by then they will have learned the truth, won't they? You folks are right all along. See, this sort of thing. I know it. I can have fellowship with any Christian brother or sister. But we might have differences when it comes to baptism. When it comes to millennium, you see. When it comes to rapture. And it's that sort of a thing, you see, that you say, well, this is what I believe the Word of God teaches, and you have to be adamant, dear friends, in that sort of thing. You let one thing go, you can let two things go, you can let three things go, et cetera, et cetera. One of the big things now is no Sunday night meetings, no midweek meetings. I say, what do you do instead? Oh, we stay home. We have quality time with the children. I say, define that. What quality? Well, that's watching Disney on TV. Is that better than having the kids, you know, singing the kids? Well, the children are too young to understand. They can anticipate the atmosphere. They know that if not the Lord's half day, it's the Lord's day. Many places, the Lord's half day. We quit at noon, you see. A fellow came up to me afterwards, and I said that, and he said, at our assembly, we have the Lord's quarter day. People come for the Lord's supper, and then they go home. We don't see them the rest of the week. We have the Lord's Quarter Day now, you see. These are very precious things to us. Lyndon Sheridan has said a lot of things that I really enjoy, but one thing that he said really stuck with me, and that is I'm supposed to be subject to my elders. If my elders say we're going to have a Sunday night meeting and a midweek meeting, then if I'm subject to my elders, I will support that that the elders have ordained. And I say amen to that. I say amen to that. So what do we do? We do other things instead. Nothing of which is any, does come anywhere close to the value of being in the Lord's house around the word of the Lord, singing praises unto him. We want to be like all the other nations round about. And Samuel said to them, you don't know what you're saying. You don't know what, you know what it's going to cost you to support a monarchy? We don't care. We want one. says it's going to cost you a lot. In taxes, it's going to cost you a lot. You're going to lose your flocks. You're going to lose your herds. You're going to lose your sons. You're going to lose your daughters. They'll be involved in the service of this king. We don't care. We want what the other folks have. You know, that's where government started, isn't it? Government started that way. We don't care. This is what we want. We don't care what it costs. And Samuel was arguing with the folks, and finally the Lord tapped Samuel on the shoulder and said, Samuel, give it up. They have not rejected you. They have rejected me. It's nothing personal concerning you, Samuel. He tried one more time and he didn't get anywhere, so you know how that happened. The Jewish monarchy, that's chapters eight through thirteen. It turned over to chapter thirteen in verse number seven. Chapter thirteen, verse number seven. Some of the Hebrews went over Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead, as for Saul he was yet in Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling. That's the key word there. Keep that in mind, trembling. And then you turn over to chapter fourteen and verse number fifteen. Chapter fourteen and verse number fifteen. We have this word over there. Chapter fourteen and verse number fifteen there was trembling. There's our word again. There was trembling in the host, in the field, and among all the people. The garrison and the spoilers, they also trembled, and the earthquake. So it was a very great trembling. Do you suppose the Holy Spirit wants you to see the word trembling in that verse? You'll find as you read your Bible over and over and over again, the Holy Spirit will give you the same thought over and over again, sometimes couching it in different verbiage, But he knows that so many times we read words, but we don't see the thought in it. So he gives us the thing again. Even the Lord himself said verily, verily, because we don't always get the first verily, do we? Trembling, trembling, trembling, trembling. And you see, Samuel could have come along, said the people. You see, I told you so. You wanted a king above it. You wanted your will to be done above the will of God. Now, what did it get for you? It got us a lot of insecurity. Tremeling and trembling and trembling and trembling. And that's the result, isn't it? When you follow your own will, you follow in the will of yourself as versus the will of God, you find trembling. And you talk to people today. And you say, you know, you can have eternal security. You can know that you're safe. And people that I've told that to sometimes recoil from me. I say, what's the matter? They say, you are being presumptuous. You have to wait until you get up there and your good deeds or wait against your bad deeds, or you have to try to convince St. Peter that you're eligible to get in through the pearly gates. I said, where'd you get that from? I was told that. Boy, is that wrong or what? Doesn't the Bible say absent from the body and what? Where's the Lord? Is he outside trying to get in? Well, no, he's already in, didn't he? He did it at the right hand of God the Father. And when you pass from this scene, if you're saved, you go to be with the Lord Jesus Christ, and wherever he is, that's where you are. You're not outside. Besides, what rights does St. Peter have to tell me whether or not I can get in? I said, where did you get that idea? The Lord gave him the keys to the kingdom. He said, did he give him the keys to heaven too? Well, then they always say, well, you know more about it than I do. You know, what do I know about it? But that's what your world thinks today. And you can tell them, I know if I would depart this scene right now, immediately I would go into the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, they are horrified. That's being presumptuous. But it's not being presumptuous. It's believing what God has told you in the Word of God. You're not making it up. It's not a hope-so religion, you see. You are simply believing what the Lord has told you. And if you can't trust what God has told you, then bless your hearts, who can you trust? And if the Lord says, absent from the body and present with the Lord forever and forever and forever, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, which cleanses us from all sin, how would you be kept out of heaven? The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, has cleansed you from all sin, you see. Cleanse you from all sin. That's a wonderful hope, isn't it? That's a wonderful truth. That's a wonderful thing to believe. And you go back and read Romans chapter eight and verse number one that I just quoted, and it's in the present tense. You can read it tomorrow and say exactly the same thing. No, you won't read anything that says, offer good only for thirty days. Isn't that wonderful? Whosoever will may come. My, what a wonderful promise. I know. I know. Not because I made it up. Word says, remember as a Peter who said, we have not believed cunningly devised fables. but you believe the truth of God, you see, and say, Lord, I believe it. I don't always understand it, and I don't always have the ability to explain it, but, Lord, I believe it, because you told it to me. You told it to me. And so Samuel tries, and the Lord said, let them go. They've got the bit in their mouth. Let them go. And you remember how the Lord selected Saul. Lord selected Saul. And Saul started out pretty well as the first monarch, you see. And he was a rather humble fellow. And remember, he went and hid among the baggage, your Bible says. And the Lord had to tell where Saul was hiding. Pretty hard to hide him because, you remember, he stood head and shoulders above all the other guys round and about. He became the first king. But then he sort of got lifted up. And Samuel's going to have to go to him and say, when thou wast little in thine own eyes, the Lord used you. And you prophesied with the prophets. The Spirit of the Lord was upon you. And then the Lord had to depose Saul, and we won't get into all that sort of a thing, but in the chapters, well, chapter fifteen, we finally got there. Chapter fifteen, and you find the sin of disobedience. That's, well, read the whole chapter. It's in verse nine and fourteen and fifteen and twenty-one and twenty-two and twenty-three and twenty-eight, twenty-nine and thirty. You might as well read the whole chapter fifteen. And Samuel... met Saul and Saul said, Praise God, I've done everything that he's wanted me to do. You remember what Samuel said? Oh, how embarrassing. What meaneth then? The lowing of the oxen and the bleeding of the sheep that I hear. Those things squawk at always the wrong time, don't they? Always at the wrong time. And Samuel's going to have to tell Saul, you've already been deposed and God has selected for himself King number two. Lord willing, we'll get into that tonight. The lowing of the oxen and the bleating of the sheep in my ear. Close with this. A friend of ours up in Pennsylvania had been downsized. You know what that is. They used to fire you. They don't fire you anymore. They just downsize you. And he was without a job. And he told his wife, said, let's take the little boy and we'll go for a ride through the woods and that'll help clear our heads, I guess. And so they're riding through this old... country trail down through the woods and there standing in the middle of the road was a deer. And he said, this is a providential gift from God. So they didn't have much to eat in the house. So he got his hunting rifle out of the trunk and he shot the deer. He dressed it out through the carcass into the trunk, continued their drive. And down around the corner was his game warden. Game warden said, hi folks, out for a little ride. Yeah, we thought we'd take a little spin, et cetera, so forth. Well, have a good time. Okay, about that the other time, the oxen and the sheep in the back seat said, My daddy just shot a deer. Oh, he did. Well, where is it, son? It's in the trunk. Sir, would you mind opening up the trunk? He said, Not only did I have to pay a hefty fine, but I didn't even get to keep the deer, you see. Lowing of the oxen and the bleeding of the sheep at a most embarrassing, just about the time you think you're doing well spiritually. You have a thought you ought not to have, you have an attitude you ought not to have, and those oxen and the sheep, and they're not supposed to do that because they're supposed to have been killed, aren't they? Lord willing tonight, start first Samuel chapter sixteen. That's found prayer. Our Father and our God, we thank you for the word of God. We thank you, Father, for the knowledge that has been given to us that heaven and earth shall pass away, but your word shall not pass away. Father, we thank you for not only the written word, but we thank you for the living word, the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us. We thank you, Father, for all the joys of being saved. And, Father, every twenty-four hours we're one day closer to seeing him as he is. Father, we thank you for all the joy that you have given and all the wondrous hope and the knowledge of sins forgiven and eternal life and all the joys of Christian fellowship. We pray, Father, now your blessing and dismissal upon us. And, Father, even though we depart one from another, we pray we shall not depart from the continued teaching of the Holy Spirit. But, Father, we pray these things with thanksgiving in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen.