Don't Play | 1 Samuel

SPEAKER_1 (0:03)

Thank you for tuning in to the New Vision Podcast. Our prayer is that this message builds your faith, brings clarity, and gives you hope. Enjoy the message.

Kevin (0:17)

This morning, how many of you walked into church this morning, and you were like, man, I'm freezing already. You're cold in here. All right. Yep. How many of you are warm still? It's still a little warm. Man, it's like 69 degrees in here. Where are shorts or something? I don't know. Oh man, I'm so glad for the weather to change, for it to not be like instant sweatiness as soon as you walk outside. So I hope that fall stays here. Someone this morning, I won't call them out. They were like, yeah, it's about to get really cold. And I was like, man, let it be fall first before we get to winter. If we haven't got the opportunity to meet, my name is Kevin. My wife Mel and I are privileged to lead at New Vision, and we are thankful that you're here this morning, that you took time out of your schedule to get up early and be present. Whether you're here in the room or joining us online, we greatly appreciate it. And I do want to invite you, let me slow down just a moment. I do want to invite you to one of the Connect groups that we have that I get the privilege of leading. It happens on Monday mornings at 6 a.m. It happens right here in the auditorium. We spend an hour of prayer here in the building every Monday morning. Monday morning prayer from 6 to 7 a.m. So if you have the opportunity to join us for any amount of time, I would encourage you to do that. And if you can't come to my Connect group, sign up, join in on one of the other, I don't know, 12, 13, 14 other Connect groups that we have. Find your place, find your people. Don't do life by yourself. Is Daniel Chris in the room? Alright, I think he's on safety this morning. So when you see Daniel, he's probably the smallest guy that you'll see in the church. And being sarcastic, it's the other way around. Well, Daniel and I have this thing that we do, that when we walk by each other, I bump into him and try to make him move. And a lot of times, I don't win in making him move. It's fun for me to try. It's not fun if he tries to make me move.

And so sometimes what I'll do is I'll bump him, and he likes to say, see how I didn't move? And so I'll say, or he'll say something about that, and I'll be like, I didn't move either. And he's like, PK, you don't really want me to try. And I look at him and I say, 1 Samuel, you don't want me to try.

Yeah, we all know that it's probably the other way around. He does laugh at me at that point, and he always just kind of smirks at me, and he's like, don't play PK. I'm like, all right, well, we'll wait and see how that works. And sometimes it's funny how we live in a world, myself included, where we are always untouchable. We are the hero of the story. We are always the winner. If you're wondering if you do that, I would imagine that in the times that you're driving from place to place, everyone else is a bad driver. It's not you. It's never you. You're never the person that doesn't use their blinker that cuts people off. You're never the person that's tailgating in the fast lane, flashing your lights at people. It's all the other bad drivers. Everyone else is bad. You are good. I mean, think about this. Some of you have probably thought or said out loud to other employees, you know, I could do our boss' job. I could do his boss' job too. Like, we think that we can do everything. We are the hero. And it seeps into our relationships too. Like, some of us have thought like, you know what, our spouse, our boyfriend, our girlfriend, they're lucky to have us. You know what? That's the work that I put into the relationship. You know what? They should be putting a lot of work in because I'm in it, so they should feel blessed that I picked them. And so, we kind of disengage. We allow them to put in a little bit more work than we do, and we do that to God. We allow these thoughts that we are untouchable, the hero, the winner. We allow that to seep into our relationship with God. We feel like sometimes he owes us or that he works for us. I mean, we do things for him like we pray. It might have been for a parking spot, but we prayed, you know, we come to church. Today is the first day in my new streak of coming consecutively. You know, we give him our all, relatively, as long as it's not too much that he's asking for. We do these things for him, and then we expect him to do a few things for us in return. And can you see as we navigate life that way, as we engage God like that, can you see him with a smirk on his face looking down at us, saying one of the things that I hear my friend Daniel say to us, don't play. Let's pray together. Jesus, we thank you for the time we get to spend in your presence, in your house, and with your people. God, I pray that as we look into your word today, that it would spark something in us. But maybe it's something that we've never seen before, heard before, or maybe it's something that you've given new meaning to. But I pray that as we look into your living word today, that it looks into us, that it challenges us, speaks to right where we are. God, would you anoint me to communicate your word to your people? Help me to do it clearly and confidently in a way that we hear you more than we hear me. In Jesus' name, amen. Now, I know when we start talking about treating God like he owes us or like he works for us, most of us will be like, I would never do that. And I would tell you in response to that, like, well, you know, I don't think in all of the times that we see this happen in scripture, I don't think people think that they're doing it until they realize that they're doing it. And so we are not all by ourselves in doing that. And I want to turn back and jump into our story again in 1 Samuel. At the end of chapter 3, we see again like the nation is spiraling. Leadership is out of control. And so as God sends his solution, what we find that he does, he doesn't bring about a new regime change, like an organizational chart's redone. No, he just chose to speak. He shows up, he gives his word, and he sends his word through a boy at first. His name is Samuel. At the end of chapter 3, I want you to see some of the things that are beginning to happen. As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him, and everything Samuel said proved to be reliable. And all Israel, from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south, knew that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the Lord, and the Lord continued to appear at Shiloh and gave messages to Samuel there at the Tabernacle. Now, we ended chapter 3 I wanted you to see this, because multiple times we see God is speaking. He's speaking through Samuel. And as we jump into chapter 4, Israel's having problems, not because God isn't speaking, but because they are not listening to what he's saying. So they get into a battle with the Philistines, and they lose. And then they ask this really good question. After the battle was over, the troops retreated to their camp, and the elders of Israel asked, why did the Lord allow us to be defeated by the Philistines? Then they said, let's bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from Shiloh. If we carry it into battle with us, it will save us from our enemies. So they fight the Philistines, they suffer this battle, and they ask, why did we lose? And at first, you might feel like they're asking God, but they didn't really ask God why they lost. You didn't see them think maybe they had done something wrong, they repented, they cried out to God, none of that. They asked a question, and then they didn't even wait for a response. See, they weren't really seeking direction from God, they were seeking his intervention. And that leads me to the first thing that we need to know this morning. When we talk about don't play, the first thing is you can't control God.