A Heart After God

Welcome to week six of our Bible study on 1 Samuel, which we called the coming king. And today we're going to cover chapters 14 and 15. So far in our study, we've talked about hearing the voice of God, walking with God, a heart after God. I titled today's lesson, a simple faith, simple faith. And when we first started our overview of 1 Samuel, we talked about the main characters that we would meet in this book. And those main characters were Samuel himself, Saul, and David, which next week we will, in the next session, we will meet David and we had three supporting characters, Eli and Hannah and Jonathan. And Jonathan's going to be our focus, at least for the first chapter today, because I think we are meant to learn some important things from the life of Jonathan, the faith of Jonathan. Jonathan had a simple faith. Jonathan believed that God was in charge, that God had a plan and all he had to do was just step into the stream of God's plan. As a contrast to Jonathan, Saul was developing a complicated faith. Saul once had a simple faith. Do you remember our last lesson with Nahash coming after Jabesh Gilead and Saul's like, I know what to do. I know what God's plan is here. And he just jumped into that with simple faith. But we begin to see that his faith is becoming complicated. So there's our contrast, a simple faith, complicated faith. Chapter 14 is rather long with many, many details. So again, I'm going to edit quite a bit and I hope that you can stay in tune with the verses that we're on. We'll start with verse one. One day, Jonathan, the son of Saul, said to the young man who carried his armor, come, let us go over to the Philistine garrison on the other side. But he did not tell his father. And we learn in the next verses that Saul was in Gibeah. He still had those 600 men with him. And we find out that now he's got a new priest, Ahijah, who is the great grandson of Eli. Samuel is out of the picture in this chapter. He is not serving with Saul. And we have this other man, Ahijah. All right. Verse six, Jonathan said to his young man who carried his armor, come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. And in the Old Testament, most often that term uncircumcised means people who are not in covenant with Jehovah God. Okay, let's go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that the Lord will work for us for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few. And his armor bearer said to him, do all that is in your heart. Do as you wish. Behold, I am with you, heart and soul. And in just those two verses, we see a lot about simple faith. And I want to stay on this for a little bit, because I think the Lord has something for us to learn about these two men taking a venture of faith in this situation. People who have a simple faith are very well suited to take a venture of faith. And what do I mean by a venture of faith? I mean doing something in agreement with God for his kingdom. What might ventures of faith be in our lives? Something that maybe seems hard to us, like sharing your faith with someone can be a venture of faith for many of us. Becoming involved in a ministry that has intimidated you could be a venture of faith. Gathering some women to do a wild Bible study like some of you have done with our online resources can be a venture of faith. So we see in these verses things that help us have a simple faith that God can do great things. And I want to point out two things, and I'm going to put the first one up on the slide for you. The first thing that can help us is that believing that what God did, he can do. Look what Jonathan said. He said about the Lord, nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few. Now, where did Jonathan get that idea? Was that just wishful thinking? Why did he believe that that was true? That nothing could hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few? Well, I think Jonathan knew, he knew what God had done and applied it to what God could do. He knew the history of his people. And of course, we know just in 90 seconds to go through the book of Judges, we know that God used people who were weak and few to accomplish great things. Like Ehud, the left-handed man that no one credited him having any ability, and yet he helped win over 10,000 enemies. And like Shamgar, who killed 600 Philistines with an ox code. And Jael, the woman, the marginalized woman who single-handedly drove the tent peg through Jabin's commander, Sassara, and turned the whole event of the battle. And like Gideon, who won over the Midianites with just 300 men. On and on it goes. I think Jonathan knew what God did do, so he knew what God could do. And so for us, we can also rely on what God did do. We have biblical accounts, but we have something else too. We have what God has done in our lives. Do you remember just a few weeks ago, we called it, Samuel called it, an Ebenezer. He raised an Ebenezer. Thus far has the Lord helped us. And so I wish I could have been in each one of your groups and heard your stories of what God has done for you that helps you know that he can do it again. And we rest on those things in order to take a venture of faith. So, you know, probably one of our biggest stories, not most recent stories of a venture of faith, but for our family, it was coming here 31 years ago and starting a church with no money and no people. Complications on the side where we left, complications on the side where we were coming to. And you know, but we said, well, hey, nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few. Second thing that is useful, I'll put up here, is encouragement. Jonathan's armor bearers said to him, do all that's in your heart. I am with you heart and soul. We need courage to take a venture of faith. And do you see the root word courage in the word encouragement? It is the opposite of fear. Courage equips us for ventures of faith. Now I would say that each one of us in this room should strive to be this type of an armor bearer that says to the people in our world, whether it's your husband or your children or your pastor or your pastor's wife, I am with you heart and soul. As opposed to, I'll go this far with you. That's all the farther I'm going to go on this venture of faith. I'm with you heart and soul. But everybody in this room needs an armor bearer. You need a friend. You need someone beside you that says, I'm with you. Let's do it. And, you know, we love to have that person with skin on. Sometimes we don't. But, you know, the Holy Spirit is our encourager and the Holy Spirit is always with us. And he would say, if it's not irreverent to say it this way, I'm with you, you know, heart and soul and gives us that encouragement. So what, what is the venture of faith that's in front of you right now? What has the Lord opened up for you that you need to step out and say, Hey, what can hinder the Lord? Some of you need to homeschool your kids. What could hinder the Lord? Some of you need to reach out to a difficult family member. What could hinder the Lord? Some of you need to run for the school board. What could hinder the Lord? There's all kinds of things that God would put on our hearts to do. And the truth is that we feel weak and we feel lacking, but I want to draw your attention to what, uh, what Jonathan and his armor bear and all of Israel was facing in this moment. Remember, they didn't have any, uh, good weapons, you know, the Philistines saw to it that anything iron or pokey, you know, they had to go for them to get them sharpened. And so the, here they were without good resources. And yet Jonathan's heart is what can hinder the Lord because he knew that God had always worked with little bit, few people, marginalized people, weak people. So I just wanted to kind of spend a little bit of time on that, even though these are long chapters, verse 12, um, after Jonathan, the armor bearer, you know, made a plan. And the men of the garrison said, come up to us and we'll show you a thing. And Jonathan said to his armor bear, come up after me, the Lord has given them into the hand of Israel. And then Jonathan climbed up on his hands and feet. And I want you to stop right there because when we take a venture of faith, it's not just all rainbows and sunshine. Jonathan had to climb up on his. hands and feet. Ventures of faith require work. And Jonathan applied himself to do the work that was required. And his armor-bearer went after him, and the Philistines fell before Jonathan, and his armor-bearer killed them after him. And that first strike killed about 20 men. And so in verse 15, there was a panic in the camp, in the field, among the people. The earth quaked. It had become a very great panic. And so God clearly honored their simple faith and brought in a supernatural element as well. And now as an interesting contrast between Jonathan's simple faith, we have this strange response from Saul. Logic would say, oh, an earthquake. They're in a panic. Come on, let's go. Look what the Lord has done. Not Saul. He wants to form an investigation. And that's what he does. Verse 17, Saul said to the people, count and see who has gone from us. Now we want to reflect just a little bit here on what's going on with Saul. He knows that the days of his kingdom are numbered, and he knows that someone will replace him. And so my guess is he's thinking about two things right now. He's wondering when his kingdom will end. Is today the day? Will it be next week, next year? And he's wondering who it is that will replace him. Is it this person who started this? We need an investigation because I need to know. That's just my guess. Verse 17, when they had counted, behold, Jonathan and his armor-bearer were not there, which may have provided a very small amount of relief for Saul because he probably never guessed Jonathan would replace him because his dynasty was not to endure. So there you have it. But then he added another delay and another complication. Verse 18, Saul said to Ahijah, bring the ark of God here. And in your ESV, it says ark. Some of the manuscripts say ephod. I wonder if both weren't involved, that Saul sent for the ark, but the priest was using the ephod at the moment. It didn't really matter. Saul says, nevermind, withdraw your hand. We gotta go anyway. And so in verse 20, we find out that Saul and all the people who were with him rallied and they went into battle. And the summary in verse 23 is that the Lord saved Israel that day. But Saul did another complicated thing. Verse 24, the men of Israel had been hard pressed that day. So Saul laid an oath on the people saying, cursed be the man who eats food until this evening. And I am avenged of my enemies. So none of the people had tasted food. Let's pause for perspective here, because we'll find out all the way down in verse 31, that the army had chased from Micmash to Aijalon, 18 miles that day. Now I walk just a very little bit. When I was young, you know, the jobs that we had available to us when I was a teenager, we're babysitting and walking the bean fields. And in that day, walking the bean fields meant that you took a row on either side of you, or maybe two rows, and you would walk the length of the field and weed it. You were taking out the weeds. Usually you did it by hand. It wasn't excruciating work. You would just walk a half a mile down and a half a mile back. And we called that a round. How many rounds did you do this morning? Well, we only got three rounds in this morning, whatever. Anyway, you only did three, four rounds, miles until you needed to stop and have some lunch, get your blood sugar back up. So perspective here, 18 miles. This isn't just walking and pulling a few weeds. This is hand to hand combat. You go forward a little bit, you come back a little bit, and you're fighting all the way with no food. So can you imagine the level of their electrolytes and their blood sugar? They needed fuel in order to accomplish this, but their leader had done a very foolish thing. Verse 25, when all the people came to a forest, there was honey on the ground. Wouldn't that have been the perfect thing? But no one put his hand to his mouth for the people feared the oath. Verse 27, but Jonathan had not heard that his father charged the people with the oath. So he put out the tip of the staff, dipped it in the honeycomb, put his hand to his mouth, and his eyes became bright. And then one of the people said, your father strictly charged the people with an oath. All right, so let's pause again to reflect on Saul's complicated relationship with the Lord. Okay, it seemed like he was making the mistakes that we've read about before, relying on symbols of faith instead of a simple faith. First, this investigation. Let's get the ark. What would the ephod tell us? Let's lay an oath about this fasting. Unnecessarily complicating things. Saul's focus was not a venture of faith. It was Saul being avenged of his enemies. So he had turned something that was supposed to be about the Lord into something that was all about himself. And additionally here, what we see that we can apply to our lives, a little lesson on leading here, is that some leaders inspire and some leaders intimidate. And we want to be leaders who inspire. When a mother or teacher or a boss inspires her children or her students or her workers, they want to achieve more. They want to work for the common good. They want to apply courage and simple faith to the difficult decisions that they need to make in life. But when a mother or a teacher or a boss intimidates her children or her students or her workers, they build up fear. What if I don't do it right? Maybe I just shouldn't do it at all because I might not do it right. And they kind of turn into as producers robots, you know. They don't seek opportunities. Just do what they're told. And it exalts rule keeping above all virtues. And you can see the guy came to Jonathan said, didn't you hear the rule? The rules are the most important thing. Your father laid a rule that said you're not supposed to eat anything. And so we want to be good leaders that lead by inspiration and not intimidation. This was clearly intimidation. Verse 29, Jonathan said, my father has troubled the land. See how my eyes have become bright because they tasted a little of this honey. How much better if the people had eaten freely today of the spoil of their enemies. And Jonathan was right. These complications brought hardship on the people. This was not good leadership. Nonetheless, we find in verse 31 that they did strike down the Philistines from McMash to Eidolon, which was a big accomplishment, but it came at a big price tag. Here's the price tag at this point. For some reason, the fast was over. This oath was over. Maybe it had become evening. Maybe Saul felt that he was avenged of his enemies. But now for some reason, the people were free to eat free to partake of the spoils. But because of Saul's foolish oath, they were very weak. And they just looked at this food like I just got to eat this or I'm going to pass out. So verse 32, they pounced on the spoil. I love that word, pounced on the spoil. And they took sheep and oxen and calves and they slaughtered them on the ground and the people ate them with the blood. All right. Now, this is tragic. This is a problem, not just from our Western ears that go, ooh, but these are Israelites. And from the earliest days that God was expressing who he was and his plan for mankind to Abraham, the blood was to be honored. The blood was special. The life of a thing was in the blood. God kept telling the Israelites over and over again because he was going to prepare animals to be sacrificed and the blood of the animals would be symbolic of the future sacrifice of his son, the blood of his son, which would cleanse us from sin. So he told his people all along, do not eat the blood. The blood belongs to me. The blood is to be drained out on the ground. So the tragedy of this was that they weren't able to honor God. They weren't able to obey because of this foolish oath. In verse 33, Saul was told, behold, the people are sinning against the Lord by eating with the blood. And he said to the people, you have dealt treacherously when it was really his faulty leadership. And so we see that his growing narcissism and his arrogance and his blame shifting are just becoming virtues of his character. It's becoming more and more who he is, what he says, what he does. He wanted the men to fast so that he could be avenged of his enemies. And then when that fast brought a temptation to be disobedient to God, he blamed them for it. It's like taking a five-year-old and setting them up to do work that they're completely incapable of doing and then blaming the child. So Saul rolled, he said, roll a great stone over here to me and the people brought their animals there to slaughter them. So that the reason about the stone is because you could position the animal in such a way you slaughter the animal and the blood will drain to the ground. So that's the difference there. And then the text goes on and Saul wanted to chase the Philistines even further that night and the soldiers, the soldiers were accustomed to leadership by intimidation. And so they said to him, well do whatever seems good to you. Because when you're accustomed to having someone over you that intimidates you, your highest goal is to keep the status quo. Don't say anything, don't do anything that's gonna power up their anger about this. And so the soldiers just say, do whatever you think is right. But the priest did say, well let's draw near to God. So in verse 37, Saul inquired of God, shall I go down to the Philistines? Will you give them into the hand of Israel? But he did not answer him that day. And Saul assumed they were under a curse. So he begins this asking of like, what is wrong? Who did wrong? In verse 41, Saul said, Lord why have you not answered your servant this day? If this guilt is in me or in Jonathan my son, give Urim. But if this guilt is in your people Israel, give Thummim. And these were two stones, a dark and a light stone that the priest would have in his garment or in the breast plate. And you ask the Lord a question and trust that the stone that comes out is going to give the answer. That's how they were doing things. And Jonathan and Saul were taken. And then Saul said, now cast the lot between me and my son. And Jonathan was taken. And so Saul said to him, tell me what you have done. And Jonathan said, well I tasted a little honey with the tip of my staff. Here I am. I will die. And Saul said, well God do so to me and more also. You shall surely die, Jonathan. And now the whole army, and we're cheering in our hearts as we read this, with a united voice of courage, they care more. They care less about the status quo at this point and more about the injustice that is about to happen if they don't stand up. And so the people said in verse 45, shall Jonathan die who has worked this great salvation in Israel? Far from it. As the Lord lives there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground. For he has worked with God this day. I wonder if the implication isn't he has worked with God and you've been working against him. But they were careful. So the people ransom Jonathan so that he did not die. And then the chapter closes for us with this resume about Saul's accomplishments and his family. And I'm not going to read that because I feel in a little bit of a rush to move on to chapter 15 because we have more lessons in that chapter. And so as we move to this watershed chapter, the end of the first half of our study of 1st Samuel, what we're going to learn is that God allows people to be confirmed in their choices. My husband always says God is a gentleman and he doesn't force. He allows people to be confirmed and we're going to see that Saul is confirmed in what we see growing in him. This complicated relationship with the Lord. It begins this way. Chapter 15. Samuel says, so Samuel's back in the picture. Now he comes to Saul. Clearly the Lord had told him to do this. Samuel said to Saul, the Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people, Israel. Now, therefore listen to the words of the Lord. I have noted what Amalek did to Israel and opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. And I gave you that passage in Exodus chapter 17. So you know about that story. Verse three. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. All right. So this is a very clear instruction, but it definitely troubles our Western ears because we have created a way of choosing our, uh, defining our own morality and demanding that God fits into our morality rather than looking at the word to, um, help us understand God's morality and then fitting into that. And this just is a problem, but we want to look and see who are these Amalekites. Well, they were descended from Esau, but they didn't really live with the Edomites. They were kind of separate from them. They practiced a very wicked form of idolatry, which included taking their infants and sacrificing them live to their gods. Uh, they were very cowardly in their dealings with other people as referenced by that Exodus 17, where what they would do is they would come up to people. And in that passage, they came and picked off people at the back end of their travels. And so who was in the, in the back? Well, the sickly, the old, uh, the mothers with babies, those who have to travel slower. So they were a very cowardly sort of group of people. And God had told Moses at that time, he goes, make a note of this for Joshua, because there's going to come a day they will be punished for this. There will come a day when I will wipe them out. In fact, the words were utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. And yet God waited over 500 years to give them an opportunity to repent and to walk in agreement with God's ways. So God is very long suffering. So this is the instruction. And first Saul, he dismisses the Kenites who lived among them and told them, Hey, I got no quarrel with you, but we're coming after these people. So you might want to skedaddle and get out of here. And so, because the Kenites had shown kindness to Israel when they came out of Egypt. So verse seven, it tells us that Saul defeated the Amalekites from Havilah as far as sure, which is east of Egypt. Okay. Now up until now, this could have been called a venture of faith. Samuel said, I want you to do this. Saul did this sounds like a venture of faith to me. But now we begin to see that Saul turned a venture of faith into a venture of Saul. Let's read verse eight. He took Agag, the king of the Amalekites alive. He devoted to destruction, all the people with the edge of the sword, but Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and oxen and fatted calves and lambs and all that was good and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless. They devoted to destruction. Now we take a little side trip into the world of Samuel. God's going to speak to Samuel now in these verses, verse 10, the word of the Lord came to Samuel, very similar to when he was a little boy and God spoke to him about Eli. I regret that I have made Saul king for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. And Saul was angry and he, or excuse me, I'm sorry, Samuel was angry and he cried to the Lord all night and Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning. And it was told Samuel, Saul came to Carmel and behold, he set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal. Now here's confirmation to us of what I just said. Saul took a venture of faith and turned it into a venture of Saul. He built a monument to himself after he was successful in this. And we have another lesson for leading here. Leaders that go on ventures of faith don't build monuments to themselves. Saul was given a leader's task. It was tough. That was a hard task that he was given, but it was a privilege to partner with God in God's plan. Saul was merely a partner with the Lord. There's no need to build a monument for that. And so it was God's work and God's plan. And there's something that we can learn in this because you know what? Here we are. Every single one of us, the Bible tells us that God has prepared good works in advance for you to do. So God has ventures of faith. He has instructions for each one of us as well. It's God's plan. It's God's work. We are merely partners with him. There's no need for us to build a monument and to make it about us. We're merely stepping into the stream of what God is doing and partnering with him. So I want to show you a New Testament verse from Luke that speaks to this.

And so that reminds us about our attitude to remember it is the Lord's work. We're just doing what God has given us to do. Okay. Verse 13, Samuel came to Saul and Saul said, well, blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord. And Samuel with a little bit of snark in his voice, I'm pretty sure says, well, what then is this beating of sheep in my ears? the lowing of oxen that I hear. And Saul said, oh, well, they've brought them from the Amalekites. For the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction. The instability of Saul's thinking at this time makes it so that he can move effortlessly to blame shift what was bad and accept credit for what was good. I don't even think he knows he's doing it. He is just becoming confirmed in this way of thinking. Nothing is my fault. If anything is bad, they did it, but I'll take credit for the good. So Samuel said, stop. I will tell you what the Lord said to me this night in verse 18. The Lord sent you on a mission and said, go devote to destruction, the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed. Why did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord? Saul had so revised God's instructions. You can't even see what he did wrong. We're gonna talk about revision that way. Verse 20, Saul said, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent. I've brought Agag the king. I've devoted the Amalekites to destruction, but the people took of the spoil and sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord, your God in Gilgal, at least his story remains consistent. And Samuel who's seeing right through him said, has the Lord a delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination and presumption, I'm gonna use the new King James word, stubbornness, is as iniquity or idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he's also rejected you from being king. So Samuel is saying, Saul, this is your choice. You made this choice. Saul chose rebellion and stubbornness and now these are the consequences. And so the reminder for us is in this little snippet from Samuel that God cares about us listening. We've talked about that. Listen for the voice of God. God cares about us obeying. We've talked about that, a heart after God. What causes difficulty in doing those two things? Well, the words here are rebellion and stubbornness. Now, you might not think that you're rebellious or stubborn or arrogant, but what we see in this episode, what this boils down to is Saul has taken God's command, God's instructions and done a little magic with it and revised it into something that suited him better. This wasn't complete disobedience. This was partial disobedience. This was revision. Let's make it more palatable for me. And you know what? I've revised God's instructions to make it suit me better. We're pretty good at it. And this is what rebellion does in us. This is what stubbornness can do in us. And so these are words that, man, I'd rather use more sunshiny marigold words in a women's Bible study, but we should look at it, shouldn't we? It's a sober reminder of the simple faith of listening and obeying. And you know what helps us sometimes to listen and obey is to have a friend who tells us what we don't wanna hear. If we have begun to walk in rebellion or stubbornness and we have a friend that loves us enough to point it out, man, that can be helpful. Okay, verse 24, Saul says to Samuel. So he's applying a little bit of diplomacy. You know, if you're in a contract negotiations with somebody, you know, you give a little bit and all that kind of thing. That's what Saul's doing here. He goes, okay, I have sinned. I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, but it was only because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Now, please pardon my sin and return with me so that I may bow before the Lord. Negotiation should work, right? And Samuel says, I will not return with you for you have rejected the word of the Lord and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. Samuel restates again, Saul, this was your choice, okay? And Samuel, as Samuel turned to go away, Saul seized the skirt of his robe and it tore. And Samuel said, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you. And so isn't it fascinating that we see God's long suffering with two different situations. 500 years, God bore with the Amalekites until he said, that's the end. And the person who was supposed to bring that judgment and partner with God was also in judgment because God was bearing with Saul and giving him chance after chance, after chance. And then just in that moment of, we see the visual of the tearing of the robe, God says, okay, that was your last chance. I will now allow you to be confirmed in your choices. Very sad thing. Samuel knew it, Saul knew it. And now the good thing for us is in part two of our Bible study, we get to focus on the coming king. Again, there will be another king because God's gonna tell Samuel, fill up your horn with oil again, I'm sending you to Bethlehem. I'm sending you to Jesse. We're gonna do this again. But sadly, part one ends with Samuel having to finish the mission that Saul was given. Look in middle of verse 33. And Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. Wow. And then Samuel went to Ramah and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. And Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death. But Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel. And the word regret here ascribes to God a human emotion of being sorry. Sorry that things turned out the way they did. Sorry that Saul turned out the way he did. I think God was equally sorry that Agag turned out the way that he did. God wants none to perish, but all to come to repentance. And we see that he has this sorrow when people don't make that choice. So I wanna bring this full circle here. These two chapters, what we've seen is that Jonathan portrays for us a simple faith. Jonathan believed that God was in charge. God had a plan. All Jonathan needed to do was step into the stream of what God was doing, take a venture of faith, and God would do the work. He would save, whether by many or by few. And as we go into the next section, David will have that same faith. David and Jonathan have that same simple faith. By contrast, we watch how Saul got a complicated relationship with the Lord due to his rebellion, due to his stubbornness. He took God's instructions and revised them to make them more palatable. So I just wanna end with four questions. Tough questions as we look in the mirror of this passage. I need to ask myself, do I have a simple faith or do I have a complicated faith? Do I revise God's commands for me, God's instructions for me to benefit myself? Am I rebellious? Am I stubborn? Do I more closely resemble the heart of Jonathan and what will be the heart of David? Or do I more closely resemble the heart of Saul? Aren't those terrible questions for me to end on, to end a whole session on? But here's the thing. Two weeks, we come back, we start part two. The next chapters are going to be glorious because our coming king will anoint David. Samuel will anoint David as the king. And the first thing we get to look at is David and Goliath, probably the best loved Bible story in the whole of the Old Testament. So come back, we're gonna keep learning fresh things. Lord, these are difficult questions for us to answer ourselves because I know that pretty much everybody could really honestly see a seed of rebellion or stubbornness, complicated relationship with you in our hearts. And Lord, I know that everyone wants the simplicity of a relationship that just knows you're in charge and knows you have a plan. Lord, change us through this study. Change us to be women who will love you and obey you and go on ventures of faith just because we simply want to see your kingdom advance. So Lord, that's our heart. And we thank you for these passages that show us some of the tough things, Lord. And I just pray in our discussion time that we will. one another to be set on the right path. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.