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Thank you very much, gentlemen, for supplying we with me with a number of questions, and uh, I shall endeavor to uh, answer them, and therefore we'll keep, I'll keep my remarks on Samson uh, to their minimum, but I hope say enough to point to the some of the big principles at work uh, in this story. But let me come back first, just to elaborate a little bit on what I was saying about reconnoitering the enemy and what Philistineism stands for. The uncircumcised Philistine, their god that they worshipped and how it is portrayed in Samuel, uh, do you see, uh, and then finally in their great champion, which was Goliath, a huge man. Now, in interpreting the story of Goliath, many, uh, expositors, teachers, preachers, and evangelists have talked about this as an example of our warfare against the devil, against spiritual wickedness in high place, you'll say. Okay, that is a fact in the New Testament. We do have to wrestle against principalities, powers, mights, and dominions. But it seems to me would be do better in understanding the Philistine Samson to, uh, go first to history. And the history, briefly put, is that the Israelites eventually came to Samuel the judge and said, look here, Samuel, uh, you've been okay, but your sons are miserable and they take bribes, and we're fed up with this business anyway. Uh, do you see, of um, uh, when the enemy comes up and uh, starts to beat us up, you see, and breathes down our neck, then we have to have these prayer meeting things and cry to God and wait for God to raise up a deliverer. Uh, do you see? So we have a suggestion, Samuel, to make that instead of going through all that palaver, we should, you should appoint us a king, you'll see. And then when the enemy came up, we should have a king in place, shouldn't we? Mm. That might do away with this need to have prayer meetings and pray to God and all that, wait on him to raise up a deliverer. We will have a deliverer there already in place, organized against the eventuality that the enemy should come up. And and uh uh Samuel was very displeased when he heard it, and God said, never mind, Samuel, uh, it's me they've rejected and not you, but go ahead and make them a king. And so God commissioned them, God commissioned Samuel to go and anoint a certain chap behind him, Saul. And when eventually the people were gathered together and Samuel presented this Saul to the people, they were delighted. Marvelous, they said, God, you've done the marvelous. Yes, this is just the man we want, because it is said that this Saul was a very big man, and he stood head, head and shoulders above all the rest, you see. Marvelous, they said, God, now we've got a big man to fight our battles. Which all went well, and he did, he did obtain many victories, particularly over Ammonites and things, uh, you'll see. But alas, if you put your faith in a big man, you're okay until a bigger man comes. And that's precisely what happened. And one day, out of the camp of the Philistines, there came this beautiful mountain of a man. And Saul didn't go out and fight him, and even Jonathan, chief warrior in Israel, didn't go out and fight him. Now the enemy was not Satan, not in those far off days. It was this big man. And God was deliberately teaching Israel a lesson. They had preferred to put their faith in the big man Saul rather than in God. Now they must find out where it leads to. When David went out to fight him, Saul at first tried to persuade David to use his armor. And David had a go, he said, but he wouldn't fight him any, it wouldn't fit him anyway, we're useless. And it was Daft suggestion to take Saul's armor and spear. David going after G- Goliath. Well, when Goliath was armored like a tank and his spear was like a telegraph pole, uh, he would have skewered David on the end of it before David got anywhere near. Let me put this into you. Nonsense. Excuse me. And David, uh, came to him, and when Goliath saw David coming, and all he saw that David had was a stick, because David took a staff in his hand and then a sling, but I don't think he showed the sling to Goli- uh, to Samson. Uh, to Goliath, I mean, I'm talking about Goliath. Sorry, gentlemen. Goliath everywhere I said Samson. Goliath. Um, uh, I don't think he showed Goliath the, the, the sling. And when he saw this little youth, David, red-cheeked with a stick, absolutely infuriated. You come against me with a stick like a man takes to drive a dog out of his backyard. Well, he was insulted. He was the chief big man, champion fighter of the Philistines. It would be like putting me into the re- boxing ring with Cassius Clay. The chap wouldn't even bother to fight me. Insult to him. And David had to explain to him the grounds on which he come- he came. You've defied the God of heaven. It's not a question of who has the best weapon. It's God that's going to give you the victory. And David had deliberately chosen the weak we- uh, uh, contemptibly weak in the eyes of Goliath, weapons to overcome this giant of a man because he came in the name of the Lord. Gentlemen, do you know any passage in the New Testament where the trouble is diagnosed as being trusting big men? Anybody hazard a guess? Is there a passage where... Yes, First Corinthians one, of course. Danger of the Lord's people putting their trust in big men, Paul, Apollos, or Peter. And Paul objects to it and cites... What does he cite against it? What's wrong with it? What is his answer to it? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Did they die for you? Pardon? Did they die for you? Well, that's partly so, yes. Yes, is it? Did Christ, it was, did Paul die for you? No, he didn't. But the aspect of the gospel? God has chosen weak. Weak things, yes. The deliberate choice of the things that are despised, contemptibly weak, to bring to naught the things that are. That is the principle of the cross. Which is the end of all big man-ism. And the lesson it teaches, let not the, the, the wise man boast in his wisdom. Let not the rich man boast in his riches. He that glorieth in the sense of where his basic confidence is, let him glory in the Lord. And the cross of Christ is aimed deliberately by God to put an end to big manism and trust in man, and to bring us back to faith in God. And the weapons he uses are deliberately the gospel, the uh, the cross of Christ is foolishness, is weakness. God has deliberately used it. That little thing, that little pastiche, uh, to, yeah, to fill in what Philistineism stands for, and particularly now in Goliath, their chief man, to see the big man. This is Philistineism. Let's now think of, uh, s- uh, Samson's story. And I must be very careful what I say about, uh, Samson. Because when we read Hebrews, we find that the Holy Spirit describes Samson as a man of faith. Left to myself, I wouldn't have said that. And I hold hope that when the Holy Spirit comes to write up my record, he will be as indulgent to me as he was to Samson. He was a man of faith. But you'll have to face the fact, gentlemen, that though he was in some sense a deliverer, when he died, Israel were just as much under the despotism as the Philistines as they had been when he started. He never permanently delivered Israel from the Philistines. But let's look at the whole story, and here I am abbreviating it, of course, but, um, we're aiming to look at the basic principles. We have looked from time to time at the qualifications of the deliverers. How were they qualified and fitted to do their task? What was the preparation for them? Now, if we do that this time also, we shall notice that, uh, Samson's preparation, or the preparation for Samson, was not in him, it was in his parents, and particularly in his mother. For a man of God appeared to her, promised her a son. And she went and told her husband. And together they came, and the husband said to God, let the man of God appear again. And so the man of God appeared again. And promised them this child. And laid down all sorts of rules for him. He shall be a Nazarite from birth, and therefore his parents, and his mother in particular, was told she must not take any wine now. She was going to carry this child, and he would be a Nazarite from his birth, totally devoted to the Lord. You'll see. And when he, uh, the man of God announced this to the parents, the husband said, uh, would you mind waiting for a little bit? I'd like to offer a sacrifice. And the man of God said yes. They brought the sacrifice and set fire to the sacrifice, and as the smoke of the sacrifice went up to heaven, the man of God did something, uh, uh, tremendously impressive. He ascended up in the smoke to heaven. And the husband was scared stiff. He said, we've seen the very face of God. We shall die. Because of the idea that no man can see God and live. His wife knew better, and she said, well, if God had determined to destroy us, he wouldn't have shown us all these things about our son to be, would he? That does nothing to detract from that amazing situation. It was, I presume, what we come to call a Christophany. The one whom we call the second person of the Godhead, appearing. Not in flesh, he wasn't flesh actually, but like angels would appear and appear to be humans. So he appeared. And the marvelous thing was they saw him go up into heaven. This man of God descended into heaven and knew it was real. And the sense of being in touch with God, and the reality of God. This is what lay behind the preparation for Samson's birth. The Spirit of God would come upon him as distinct from mere human brains and brawn, valuable as they are, who of- who of us would do without them, if we had them, that is, eh, uh, but the supreme need and reality of the Spirit of God. Read, if you must, First Corinthians again. More than human power available to the believers and dependence thereon. That was the kind of preparation, and I hope we can see how that is the exact preparation that you would need to deal with big manism of Philistineism. Reality of God, the reality of the unseen spiritual world, the power of the Holy Spirit. And with those great benefits and privileges behind him, Samson was to be a Nazarite. That was an order of men that were given over completely, devoted absolutely completely to the service of God. They didn't cut their hair. They were to let it grow. No razor was to come upon their head. That is to say, no human tool should operate here. Secondly, to avoid wine and alcohol. This was the particular requirements of Nazarites. You should remember that in the prophets, God had ambition and told Israel of his disappointment. I raised up of your sons to be prophets and Nazarites, and you went and gave them wine? To us, it's a parable, of course, isn't it? But Nazarites, was Samuel a Nazarite? These were men specially devoted to God, and God thought he was doing something marvelous for the Israelites, that some of their sons should become Nazarites. I remember a good Christian figure in Cambridge when I was a student. He was the second in command of the university library and a believer. And as a youth, he felt he wanted to go as a missionary, had got as far as, um, nearly packing up everything he had to go and be a missionary, and was persuaded that it was God's intervention that indicated he that he shouldn't be, but he'd always been prepared to be, and was a devout Christian man and a great help to the Christian students in the university in my day, and a tremendous expounder of Bible. I remember his saying at one stage, a dear Christian woman came to him and said about her son, what would he advise, um, as a sort of a career for her son, because her son is quite able boy, and what career would he advise? He said, madam, she's a Christian woman, have you thought about having him as a missionary? No, she hadn't thought about that. A accountant maybe, or a lawyer, or... Hmm. Ah, well. Anyway, Sam- uh, uh, Samson was to be a man devoted to God. First thing you read of him is he said to his parents, I've seen a Philistine woman, she pleases me, get her to me for wife. The parents said, tut tut, is that right you marry a Philistine? He insisted. The text says they knew not it was of God. What, God breaking his own commands? No. But God already looking forward. But whereas Samson's procedure was ill-advised, contrary to scripture, that God would turn it in his mercy. To the affliction of the Philistines. But let's notice the principle. The first judge, as we noticed on our first occasion, was raised up because people were in bondage to the Mesopotamians. Why? Because they had intermarried, says the text, with the women, the pagan women. And Othniel, raised up to be a judge to deliver the people, was raised up because it was his wife that was the secret of his spiritual success. He, he, her hus- her father, Caleb, had said to the, uh, people around, whoever goes and takes Kiryat Ya- Yarim, that was a city, from the Canaanites, I'll give him my daughter Axat a wife. And, uh, Othniel, uh, looked at the girl and then looked at the giants and went and fought the giants and won the girl. She was his incentive. And when they married, she was his incentive to ask for, from her father, for extra inheritance and some water, uh, springs of water to make the ground fertile so that he could develop the inheritance. The secret of his success was his wife. Now, the final deliverer insists, though he's supposed to be a deliverer, insists on the sin from which the first lot right at the beginning had to be delivered. We have come full circle now, haven't we? He married the Philistine wife. Didn't last a long while. He sought again the Philistine wife. Then, if you please, he went off to a harlot among the Philistines in Gaza. And then he fell in love with Delilah. And his wives proved his ruin. You'll never deliver a, you'll never deliver the people of God from the Philistines if you fall in love and marry a Philistine girl. Yeah? Because she wasn't converted. I don't think Delilah, not with the best will in the world, could you begin to maintain that perhaps she got converted. And he married her in the hope she would get converted. Afraid not. She was loyal to the Philistines right to the last, and eventually got his secret out of him. The secret of his strength was not that he was a big man like Goliath, or he had a big brain. The secret of his strength was in his hair of Nazariteship, that is his total devotion to God and supposed dependence on God. And he lost it. Through Delilah, the innocent woman. The other thing to be observed, he was meant to be a Nazarite. As a Nazarite, he was not to drink any wine. He had a fateful fate, fateful habit of going down to the Valley of Sorek, and that's the Valley of Wine. Sorek is the best, most potent wine you could ever meet in all your day's march. Grapes produce the best wine. And then, of course, he wasn't to be defiled by dead bones or anything like that, not if you were a Nazarite. If anybody died unexpectedly beside you, that cancelled all your Nazarite vow, and you had to start all over again. They had to keep themselves from defilement by death. And he won a very big victory. He used the jawbone of an... ass. But it was a Nazarite. Using a dead bone. He slew a lion at one stage. The poor old lion pigged out. And when he came by the next time, there was the carcass dead, and the bees had made honey in the dead carcass, and he took of the honey. Well, out of a dead lion, as a Nazarite. Gentlemen, we don't ne- have to be perfect to be used of God. None of us is perfect. There comes a point when if you go against God's rules and word, there comes a point when it will prove fatal. How far can you go? Notice the, uh, harlot of Gaza. While he was with her, the Philistines set a trap, but he escaped the trap by the use of his great strength. Then he went down to Delilah. They sa- they set a trap again. Ah, but this time. No. The trap closed on him. You'll not get away forever by carelessly treating God's own commands, rules, and demands for devotion. You say, but he was a very spirit-filled man. He was that. Spirit in the sense of supernatural strength. And what did he do with it? Hmm. Well, at one stage, to vent his spite on the Philistines, he got a lot of foxes and, and tied them together, uh, uh, and put a fire at the end of their tail and sent them into the standing crops. Well, there were a lot of sparks. Cool, it was fun. The kids thought it was marvelous. Ooh, supernatural fireworks, marvelous, spirit filled or something. What good did it do? He set them a riddle. Well, the things of the Spirit of God are an enigma to those not converted, that is true. As far as I can see, this riddle was nonsense. How could they hope to understand it? They only came to know it when one of his fancy women got the secret out of him and told the Philistines. Pseudo spirituality, the thing was. I must be careful what I say. He was a man of faith. Inconsistent. Sad. But in the end, those he killed by his death were more than those he killed in his life. See him now praying to God. His power had gone. When Delilah woke him up and said, the Philistines are upon you, as usual, he went out to shake himself, thinking the power would come back, but his hair was gone. And he knew not the Lord had departed from him. Oh boy. Now he was the sport and fool of the Philistines, and at their great festy occasion, he made sport for them, and he asked the lad to put his hands on the pillars and prayed, O God, once more let me know your power. Pulled the pillars or pushed them, and the house collapsed on the Philistines and on him. Found at last the principle that victory sometimes comes through death. Man of faith, therefore. Let's not forget it, nor undermine the testimony of the Holy Spirit, but this we can say with certainty. Spiritual man that he was, man possessed of more than human power at times, but because of his disobedience and folly, when he died, Israel was still in the power of the Philistines. He never did deliver Israel from them. What he did do, thanks be to God, he did really irritate the Philistines. And, you know, pierced their balloon a bit, their big man-ism, by being, he was an ordinary looking fellow, you couldn't see he was very strong. But he was used of God with more than human power, and thus made a distinction at least between the God of Israel and the God of the Philistines. And making that distinction is worthwhile. There have been times, gentlemen, in the history of Christendom, when you'd been able to go in, you could have gone into a Christian church, and you wouldn't have been able to decide who were really Christians and who were pagans. Go to Mexico, if you must, and watch the Christians baptizing to the church, taking the sacraments, and at the feast days joining in voodoo and goodness knows what else, and all the old pagan ceremonies. The deliberate tactics adopted. not only by ca- uh, Catholics, but others, of Christianizing paganism and bringing over their feasts and festivals into the church and baptizing the lot. Which raises the question, how many are actual Christians? As distinct from just being pagans. That Samson made a clear distinction, there was a difference between the God of Israel and the God of the Philistines. That was a not a nothing, it was worth doing, wasn't it? We shall need to keep the difference, gentlemen. This is not narrow-mindedness. This pertains to the very basis of a gospel. It's not ours to read the hearts of everybody, so that we can say with confidence that so and so is a Christian and so and so isn't. We do need to make the difference. You must be born again of water and the spirit. And short of being born again, a person is not a Christian. Yes? I leave it there, gentlemen, because now turn, uh, gratefully to your questions, and, uh, I read them out now as I find them before me. The first question is this, in connection with your comments on tyranny and rule, what do you believe to be the parameters of the elders' government as envisaged in one Peter five and Him- Hebrews thirteen? The parameters of their power, it seems to me, the elders' power is laid down, first of all, by our Lord's own example. They are to be shepherds of the sheep. The Lord is the chief shepherd. Their power is that of a shepherd, therefore. The power of the elders given in one Timothy chapter three is not so much what they do in that chapter, but what their qualifications for doing it are. You will have noticed one Timothy three doesn't define for you what elders do, but the character they must have if they aspire to be elders. They are, of course, to care for the people of God. And if they don't know how to, to look after their own homes, how shall they take care of the people of God? But elders, in general, have to do like the shepherd, to feed the flock and to tender the sheep, tend the sheep. They have to be able to teach. That doesn't mean they have to be able to preach. It does mean that elders, if they're going to be elders and shepherd the sheep, they must be able to sensibly explain the Christian faith. Because it's not a question of do it because I say so, but explaining the will of God and what the gospel is and the implications of the gospel, they must be able so to do. Some elders do more, they labor in word and doctrine. I take off my hat to elders. I'd never have been one. What a task it is to shepherd the sheep. What? I think it takes ten years off a man's life if he does it properly. Paul visited from house to house. It would be good if all elders in all assemblies visited like it, wouldn't it? Do you not think? And knew the sheep. They are to rule. They have authority. But the authority of a leader, they stand in front of the church, of the flock, so to speak, like the shepherd. And if it's a question of what eventually the assembly should do, and what it should allow to be taught, then it is, uh, particularly the, the responsibility of elders. As Paul says to Titus, I left you there, and to Timothy, I left you in, in, um, uh, Ephesus, that you should charge some to teach no other gospel. Elders are responsible for what the believers are taught. Yeah. What are the parameters of their power? Well, we are to submit, are we not? Husbands to wives and wives to husbands, and so forth and so on. There are limits to an elder's power, as we see from the famous case of Diotrephes, with his abuse of power. It is to be noticed that in the particular church in which Diotrephes was exercising his tyranny, the local believers were not able to cope with him and weren't asked to. John says, I will deal with him when I come. But those sundry remarks, I'm not sure that they would have helped over much. But they are a contribution to your thinking. Perhaps one of these days, our commander in chief and director of operations will organize some talks on church doctrine, perhaps. It is important. Because, gentlemen, much of the grace that God gives us to live our Christian lives comes to us not always directly, but through the fellow members of the body of Christ. Yes? And I need the church. And the grace that comes from God, from the risen Lord, through my fellow members of the body. Church history, one Timothy three fifteen is sometimes cited by those claiming final and supreme authority on matters of doctrine belonging to the church. How can we regard, how can we respond to this? And, uh, this is quoted as one Timothy three fifteen. So let me read one Timothy three fifteen. That if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. Sometimes cited by those claiming final and supreme authority on matters of doctrine belong- belonging to the church. I wonder, whoever it was, I don't want to, uh, uh, if you don't want to declare your identity, but, uh, if you care to, um, how do they deduce it out of this verse in particular? Could anybody help me to see that? You said that the church is the foundation for the priest, it's the pillar and ground for the priest, and that the foundation is maybe as important as the priest itself, or more important. And you're saying the church gave us the Bible, the church gave the scriptures, um, the church also supports the truth. Yes. Possible appreciation of the church. Oh. Well, if I may, uh, uh, repeat, what I said was the church didn't give us the Bible. Did I make that quite clear? The church didn't give us the Bible. The Bible was given to the church by the risen Lord through the apostles. Yes? But secondly, the church is not said to be the truth. The church is the pillar and ground of the truth. And if I can use an analogy, in Solomon's temple, as you approached the temple and came near to the front door, there were two freestanding pillars, and they were called one Jakin and the other Boaz. And the function of the pillars was to hold up the beautiful capitals that were on the top of the pillars. They were magnificent works of art. There were three elements to each capital, three-tiered capital. Pomegranates, lily work, uh, do you see, and so forth. Marvelous, uh, bits of decoration, delightful pillars, full of beauty, beauty, you see. The job of the pillars was to hold up those capitals. That is what the church is meant to do. The church isn't the truth. The church is to hold up the truth to the world, in all the beauty of the truth and its attractiveness and its positive, positive fruitfulness. Yes? To hold the world the the the uh the up the truth for the world to see, the objective truth of God in all its beauty. The elders particularly are taught in this chapter, not how simply the church should behave, but how the elders must behave. And one Timothy three is the qualifications that elders need to have if the church is going to do this business of holding up God's truth to the world outside. And the qualifications are largely, as you notice in one Timothy three, qualifications of how they must behave. They mustn't be given to wine, they mustn't be short-tempered, they mustn't be quarrelsome, and this, that, and the other. Their character must be such that they can thus assist the church in standing publicly to hold up the truth of God. What is the use of my holding up the truth of God in all its beautiful fruitfulness and, and beauty, if I'm a cantankerous old boy, selfish in the extreme, always wanting my own way, and a very doubtful morality when it comes to business. I have a great friend. Well, I'm not a great friend, but he's a friend of mine. I know him. He was rather concerned about this type of thing. And he told me how once time he, he came across a good Christian man and his wife sitting in their car down the center of Belfast. He knew that this Christian man in business had told lies. He felt it was his duty at that stage just to point this out to the man concerned. Pointed out to him that he had told lies. The businessman didn't deny it. He said, but they were business lies. Ooh. An elder mustn't do things like that, you see, must he? In other words, I'm arguing that the, the, the, the conditions for elderhood are largely character and behavior because of the function of the churches to hold up the truth before the eyes of the world. And if I try to do it as a preacher, and my, uh, private life is corrupt, and my business life, it won't bear investigation, and the world knows of it, what effect is that going to have on my supposed holding up the truth? Yeah, is that fair? What of the truth? That's the pillars they hold up. The pillar and ground. Well, you have to have, uh, if you're going to have a pillar, it normally has to have a base. He dryoma on which it sits. Do you see? If you like to say the church is there where, in the wisdom of God, God has made the base, not the truth, the base for it. It ought to be true that when you want, if you want the truth about God, you will see it because he's located it in the church, in the very broader sense of the church. Yes? Isn't that true? You've entrusted the gospel to the church, yes? And therefore, in that sense, the, the, uh, testimony is there located, if you see what I mean. That doesn't mean that to get people saved, you've got to, uh, they must come to your church meetings. The evangelists have got to go outside, of course. But if you want to know where to find the truth in this day and age, well, the Church of Christ is not irrelevant, surely. It's the church that Christ is in process of building, and they've been entrusted with the oracles of God. Yes? That's where its base is. Mm-hmm. Does that make any sense? Righto. Now, a succession of questions. Mm-hmm. One Samuel five five says that neither the priest or any that came to Pag- to Dagon's house tread on the threshold of Dagon. It almost seems that Dagon was not worshipped anymore or even restored to his spot after the second fall. Is this the case? Well, it may be. I'm not quite sure it would follow from the fact that they don't step on the threshold. Uh, uh, simply means that they do remember occasion when the old god fell over and, uh, on the threshold, and his head came off and his hands came off, and so in that sense they were sacred, and uh, uh, they put the man back in his place, do you see? Uh, I don't know that they ceased to worship after that. They carried on worshiping, as far as I can tell, but I wouldn't be sure about it. Forgive the wild analogy, but I, in my early, uh, days as a student, I came across another student who's a bit older than I was, and he told me he was a Catholic. And I said, oh yes. And he said, I know, I'm a historian, he said, I know the church is absolutely corrupt. I said, is that so? Yes, he said. Absolutely corrupt. He said, but that shows it is from God. Because if it weren't from God, it couldn't have stood all that corruption. The, the very fact that they'd been corrupt and they still survived proves it is of God. If you point out that Dagon had fallen over, so superstitiously they wouldn't tread on the threshold, but they would have no objection to, to putting him back in his place because that's how he got there in the first place. They put him there. And that is the nonsense of idolatry. Listen to Isaiah, how he, uh, he said he pokes fun at them, but certainly, uh, he points out the ludicrous, you'll see. Who, who is like me, says God? Measure the waters in the hollow of my hand. I stretch out the heavens with a span. Metaphors, of course, to how big God is, yes. Who has been his counselor? Who taught me what to do, says God. Well, of course not. And idolatry? He that is so impoverished he can't get a nice, a metal idol or stone idol, he chooses a tree, poor, that will not rot. No good having a god who goes rotten. Humbrie. What use is that? He chooses a tree that will not rot. It's got to be hardwood, yeah. Carves out, you see. And he gets a, not just anybody, it's not anybody can make an idol. He gets a man who's a good woodworker and has used compasses and planes and things and produces an image of a man. Puts the thing in place. And there's a question, how stable is it? You can't afford to have a god that will fall over, the slightest shock. So he gets somebody to make chains for it, as you'll see. That is ludicrous, but that is idolatry. It is man making his own god. Man deifying the forces of nature, if you like. So he's made this image, mm-hmm, carved it, put gold on it, m- m- make it look rich, yeah. Chains to keep it in place. Hoo, he's a bit tired and thirsty. He could do with some breakfast. Oh, he noticed there's a bit of wood left over, so he puts that in the fire and cooks his breakfast on it. And bows down to the rest as his God. That is folly, isn't it? I quote you a philosopher. Forgotten the dear man's name now, he's a German. He said, you know, when it says that God saves us, what it means is that man saves us. Individually, we are weak. Every human being is weak individually. But you see, man as a whole is strong, and our salvation is in man. That came not from some foreformer who hadn't yet learned the logic of philosophy. That came from a leading German philosopher. Man, the race man, is our savior. Yeah. Anyway, I wonder, this next question. If Samuel wrote Judges and used the phrase, in those days there was no king in Israel, every man did that which was right in his own eyes, doesn't it seem that he is arguing for monarchy and not a theocracy, even when we consider how he lamented when Saul was no longer f- favored in God's eyes. Yes, there is a, a, a question to be raised, isn't there? Um... on this matter of did God ever intend Israel to have a king or not? You see? And many have argued it was never God's intention for Israel to have a king because he was himself the king, and therefore, ha, when Israel demanded a king, he gave them one, uh, uh, in the hope that having a king would show them how bad a thing it was and would sicken them of ever wanting a king again, because God is king. It's not quite true, is it? If you ask yourself, when God instituted Aaron as priest, did he or did he not have in mind that one day his son would be a priest? Though not after the line of Aaron, but a priest after the order of Melchizedek. I presume you'll say yes. Priesthood was a prototype in advance of what our Lord would be. When God chose prophets, the major prophets and the minor, had God in mind that one day he would send his son as the prophet, of whom Moses spoke when he said, one day the Lord God will raise up to you a prophet like unto me. And Acts quotes it as a prophecy of Christ. If that is so, the New Testament constantly asserts that Jesus Christ is of the seed of David. That isn't an accident, surely. At least I can hardly say, can I, that he is the seed of David now, well, God didn't really intend David as king, but, you know, God made the best of a bad job and allowed his Christ, his son, to come of the seed of David. David's kinship and the covenant with David, one Samuel chapter seven, is the prophecy that, uh, fort- uh, foretold the coming of Christ. When God said to David, I will build you a house, and when you die, I will not take my mercy away from your successor as I took it away from Saul. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. God was going to maintain David's line, and eventually that promise is fulfilled in the coming of Christ of the seed of David, who in the highest possible sense, God was his father, and he was the son of God. For that reason, I find it difficult to think that God never did intend Israel to have a king. What God objected to in first Samuel is that the people came of their own bat and demanded a king. Do see, and did it in order to obviate the need to wait on God to raise up a deliverer. So their demand for a king was, in a certain sense, a rebellion against God, asked for in the wrong spirit. To be independent of God. That was the lesson that God chose them in, in telling Samuel to, uh, uh, uh, to anoint Saul as king. And in the end, Israel had to learn the lesson that in- inventing a king in order to be somewhat independent of God and no longer dependent on God leads to disaster. Then God appointed his own man, David, to say. So that's how I read it, but you who asked the question, yes? Uh, contrary views? No? Mm? Ah. Yeah. Book of Samuel, you know, is a very interesting book. Judges tells you the breakdown in the end of the judges. Saul was the last judge. His sons were useless. Judges records, uh, and Samuel, early Samuel records the failure of the priesthood. Eli's sons were abominable. Judges records at the end the, the corruption, uh, of the all-tribal assembly. Judges at the end records the, the uh, hopeless breakdown of the Levites. And a grandson of Moses, if you please, was involved in uh, organized idolatry. And uh, First Samuel records the breakdown of the first king. But then you see, little by little, God is pointing Israel through the breakdown of all these institutions, though they did a lot of good in their best days, is pointing onwards to him, the coming of him who should be priest and prophet and king and savior and the son of the father in the supreme sense. Yes? So now let me put to you a proposition, and when I meet you next, you'll tell me the, the, what it all signifies. In the book of Samuel, it is the, uh, story of the way God gave Israel their true king, David, yes? As distinct from Saul, who was the people's choice and turned out to be a disaster and had to be deposed. So God gave them a new king, but notice the curious way he did it. When Saul finally disobeyed God and rebelled, and God had to tell Sa- Samuel, this is the end of him. I'm going to take the kingdom from him and give it to another. So he said to Samuel, Samuel, I want you go to go down to a man called Jesse and anoint one of his sons as king. And Samuel said, wait a minute, Lord, I can't do that. Saul were to hear of me, so hear of it, he'd have me executed. Can't, can't go down and anoint another chap king when Saul is still alive. What on earth would you think if the Queen went to Canada to see her people there, and when she came back, she found that, uh, the Archbishop of Canterbury had anointed Tony Blair to be king or queen or whatever. Be odd, wouldn't it? Can't do that, Lord. But why did God ask him to do it? Because God had various options, didn't he? He could have dispatched Saul, that's the end of him, and anointed David to be king, no trouble. Or he could let Saul live out his days and wait till Saul was dead and killed by the Philistines, and then anoint David. But God didn't do that either. He anointed David while Saul was still alive, didn't execute Saul. And so David, the man that God had anointed, was of course rejected by Saul, hunted, chased all around about the place, though he were the anointed king. God's way of imposing his king on Israel. It's a very odd story, isn't it? And it is the fact that just as in the first chapters of, uh, uh, uh Samuel, Israel lost the Ark to the Gentiles. Remember that story? You should do. They lost the Ark with the tables of the law and the covenant with God, the very thing that distinguished Israel from the other nations. They lost the whole caboose to the Gentile Philistines. Amazing. Well, it came back in the end. And at the end of First Samuel, Israel loses their anointed Messiah to the Gentiles. Yes? To the Philistines. And he was lost to Israel among the Philistines for some years. To the Gentiles. And then he came back again. It's an interesting story, that, isn't it? Well, at least I think it's interesting. I leave it with you to make what of it that you may care to make. But it's a bit of inspired history. And who knows if one thought about it. One might think, uh, about God's principles and his methods of imposing his son as king upon our world. I finished, sir, late as usual.