The Community Church: Sermons and teaching

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Kingdom of God all starts in Eden. And I love this little phrase here, that the Kingdom of God is all about God's people in God's place under His rule and His blessing.

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And that's what we see taking place in the Garden of Eden, where God has created a people, he has given them a special commission in that particular area, and wants them to live under his rule in freedom and with creativity and with his blessing to be able to go and pack all of the potential that there is in the world. And so when you look back at the Genesis story and the Genesis with Adam and Eve, you can see right there and then the kingdom of God in action.

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What we then know takes place is that the fall happens and there is a disruption that comes because you have God's people no longer in God's place because they have to be exiled from there and they're no longer operating under God's rule and God's blessing because they're choosing to live under their own rule and trying to live under the blessing that that rule gives. Spoiler alert, it's not a great blessing. Okay? So then the story moves on because we know that God is a God of covenant and God has made a

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special covenant with humanity where he will see his purposes come to fruition and so then we we zoom ahead to the story of Abraham and there's a promise of restoration where God comes and picks this one person who lives in an ancient city away away away from Israel and he says of this person he's going to come and establish his kingdom again he's going to come and bless all nations through this one person and all of

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descendants. And so there's a promise that comes of God's rule coming and extending through eight people and again into the entire world. You then zoom on from this and we then see the partial kingdom taking place. Israel ends up enslaved in Egypt for 400 years and then uh Moses is raised up

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the Prophet of the Lord and he comes and there's a series of plagues and disasters that falls on Israel, not Israel, that was a slip of the tongue, that falls on Egypt which then leads to the release and the moving from Israel into the promised land. It's an establishment of God's Kingdom, it's taken out of Egypt into the promises and purposes of God. God brings his law, God brings his way of understanding. We want people to understand how they

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he wants them to live.

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And so then we see the establishment of a partial kingdom. And what you see then in books like Exodus and Deuteronomy, going through to Joshua and Judges, is this cycle of repeating sinfulness where the people then go into a place of oppression for God to raise up a man in order to then lead them into freedom. And so we're seeing this kind of cycle that takes place. The people of God are in the right place. They're in the promised

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land under the right guard but their hearts are still misaligned and so Israel quickly learns the real problem isn't about geography, it's about having all of the things that they need the real problem is about lordship and who really is king they want the blessings of the kingdom without the king and so what you end up seeing take place in ancient Israel is we see it

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repeated quite a few times in the scriptures where it says that everyone did what they wanted to do basically. That doesn't mean that they kind of divorced themselves from a spiritual outlook of the world. They didn't stop believing in God. What instead they did is they started to look to other gods to be able to control and to manipulate, to try and get and to fulfill the desires of their heart. So they would turn to Baal and they'd turn to Ashura and they'd turn to Molech. These are ancient gods that were prevalent in that region.

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oh And they would say if I sacrifice to you then I can get what I want and so they're trying to live according to what they determined to be right and tapping into a spiritual realm to be able to live that way. The scary thing is guys is that's not too different to how we live. We just take away the moloch, we take away the ashram, we take away the bur. But who is it that we are looking to? Who is it that we're looking to trust in in order to live according

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to what we believe we need to look to. The amount of wealth that comes and brings security, the way that people look to us to help to secure our identity, our image.

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our sense of meaning and purpose, where we go and we manipulate our situations to be able to live according to what we think is right. And we find ourselves in this partial kingdom called living, like that we can run that risk of doing more.

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And so we then come up to the establishment of the first king, who is King Saul. And that's where we kind of run into David, and that's where we're starting our series here. And I'll just press start.

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And this is one of the reasons why looking at David is so important. It's because David, Jesus identifies himself very strongly with David. This is in Revelation 22 verse 15. says, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.

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And this is really important because he's saying I am both the source of David and all of his authority and I am the descendant of the promise and the covenant and the fulfillment of that which God said was going to happen through David. Try and wrap your head around that. It can be quite tricky. He is both the source of David and the descendant of David.

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is the source of his authority and the fulfillment of the promise that was given to David, which we'll be looking at as we unpack the story of David.

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And that's really important for us because Jesus comes and says that this is who I am. And if we are called to live under his reign, which is the source of the authority for King David, then David represents something for us and almost as kind of a spirit that we are to live by because of the way that his life is marked by that.

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And so David becomes this real important archetype for us to look at in terms of the way the kingdom of God works and our place in our world. This is what Jesus is tapping into here.

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that passion for God's presence, the radical trust in God's promise, a worship that kind of precedes warfare and a repentance that restores relationship. These are the things that are hallmarks of David's life, despite all of his frailties, of his vulnerabilities, all of the mistakes that he made. He is a mixed character. And as we go through the story, we are not going to find that he is pure as pure. We're not going to find that

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He's nice all the way through. There were moments where he was brutal, there were moments where he was evil, quite frankly. And there were moments where he was unwise and misguided. And yet, the testimony that God says of David is he was a man who was after my own heart. And that's really great news for us, because I know there have been times where I have been misguided.

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where I have been unwise and where my actions have led to evil. And if there's hope for restoration for David, there's hope for restoration for us as well.

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Safe.

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we have King Saul who comes onto the scene. And this is really important for us to kind fully grasp. eh The reason why this is is...

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you have what is called a theocracy in place. God is king. Theocracy, like democracy, is people power. Theocracy is God power. God is king. God is ruling. But the people turn around to a new prophet who has come and risen up, guy called Samuel, and say that we want to have a king just like the nations all around. And they're saying something quite important here, oh because they're saying here that they...

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They see what the nations are doing around them. They see their success. They see the way they're building their power. They're building their reputation. And they're saying, we want something like that. m

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something that shows us to be great. And so instead of trusting in a God who is invisible, trusting in God who's given all of these promises, we want to set our trust in something that is like all of the other nations that don't have God as their God. And so God comes and says that it is a rejection of him. The people are rejecting him and wanting to have a king for themselves.

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And God, I mean, it's really quite remarkable. God comes and he participates with the people here. So they are rejected and he says, okay, I'm going to help you to get this king that you want, that actually I don't think is a great idea, but I'm actually going to stack all the cards in his favor so that if he lives well, he's going to succeed. And so there's this whole choosing process, there's this whole anointing ceremony.

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and God comes and gives his spirit to Saul. It's remarkable. If there was one guy who was going to succeed, it was going to be Saul because the Spirit of God had come upon him.

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And God doesn't establish a covenant with Saul, but he sets a condition where he says that, will be with you so long as you are obedient to me, so long as you trust me, so long as you recognise where your rule and your authority come from, I will be with you, you will succeed, Israel will succeed, and my purposes will be established. He had all of the cards in his hand. The grace of God...

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in this is really remarkable because God did not want this to happen and yet God tries to facilitate it in the best possible way. It just really is incredible. And so Saul, he establishes himself, he takes the scattered tribal people and he establishes a nation where they end up going on...

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They go and make war with people. There's a proper word for that. can't think of it. But they go and have battles and they fight in the people groups and they win and they win and they win. And it gets to a point where Saul has made Israel quite a powerful nation. And they come to this battle with a group called the Amalekites. And the Amalekites are pretty powerful. They're not like superpowers, but they're pretty powerful, they're pretty rich, and they're a nomadic people group and they're causing Israel

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a lot of problems. And so Saul goes out to fight them. And I'm going to... Everyone loves a video, don't we? We're going to watch a video. Has anyone seen The House of David? Has anyone watched that? on Amazon Prime. Other channels are available. But you can't watch House of David on anything else that has to do with Amazon Prime. And it's just this looking at the life of David and how it's established. And we're just going to watch a short clip here of the reaction of one of the tribal elders to the victory of Saul.

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against the amount time. So hopefully this will work now.

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sons my king my king lord of all israel i am adriel son of barzilai elder of the tribe of juda greetings adriel son of barzilai juda has long been a lion among the sons of evra just as benjamin has produced a great light in you for such a small tribe

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The greatest has come from the least, uh huh? When I was young, we were scattered, hiding in caves from the enemies you have now conquered. Leaderless, divided, preyed upon by every neighboring nation. But the Lord of Hosts heard our cry and blessed us with a king, Saul, son of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin.

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You swore, have made us a nation. You have made us feared. You have made us wealthy with the spoils of the Amalekites. We now feast on their cattle and drink their wine, and their mighty King Agaric sits humiliated at your feet. So, the tribe of Deuter renews its pledge of fealty to the anointed of the Lord Most High, to the House of Sol.

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King of all Israel. May your reign endure for all generations.

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So we see in that moment that Saul is really coming to the peak of his powers.

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the peak of his strength, the peak of his reputation. And yet as you read the scriptures, as you read 1 Samuel 15 in particular, you see that this is a moment that is the downfall of Because what Saul has done here is he has started to elevate himself and he is not heeding the word of the Lord. So one of the things that Yahweh had said, that God had said to Saul was that as he goes to defeat the Amalekites, God will grant him victory, but that he must destroy all of the

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He shouldn't take any spoils for himself. It needs to be utterly destroyed including all of the people and what we find here in that passage is how they are feasting on the capital and the fat of the Amalekites and the king, the witch king the series describes in this is still sat there at the feet of the morn. He has not heeded the word of the Lord. And this is really really important because you have this outward reflection

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reflection of power and of success that everybody comes and goes and saw. Well done mate, you've absolutely smashed it. There's a couple of dissenters that have known that Samuel had said, God said you need to destroy everything, but everybody is enjoying the spoil of the party, they're relishing in the victory and the celebration and yet this is the time where he is actually at his least successful.

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these are his least successful. There is this outward appearance, appearance of success, power, wealth, that makes everything seem it's all good, everything is fine. And yet, this is the real moment where God comes and says, I'm gonna tear my kingdom away from you. I'm gonna tear my authority away from you.

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Through Saul's reign, God comes and exposes how external strength without internal surrender cannot sustain the kingdom of God. It's impossible to be able to do that. And that's where we come and we go into the life of David. And so if you've got your Bibles, you want to turn with me to 1 Samuel 16, 1 to 13.

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And I'm just going to highlight a few things that we can see from this passage about how the Kingdom of God operates. The great news is that as we go through the story of David, lots of these themes are going to be picked on again from different angles and in different kind of multifaceted ways, which is exactly the way that scriptures work. So even though we're not going to go into depth on these points necessarily here, we're going to find moments throughout the series where we're going to be able to do that.

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So, 1 Samuel 16.1, now the Lord, I'm from NLT be my king. But Samuel asked, how can I do that? If Saul hears about it, he will kill me. Take a heavy with you, the Lord replied, and say that you have come to make a sacrifice.

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to the Lord. Invite Jesse to the sacrifice and I will show you which of his sons to anoint for me.

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So I wanted to start with something very obvious in this passage here. It's very obvious, but it's also probably the most critical, is that the kingdom begins with God. It's interesting here that even though Samuel knew that the kingdom was being taken away from Saul, he then had to wait for the word of the Lord to come to him to be able to enact what the next stage of the phase was.

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The word of God comes critically into this point to say, now I'm going to choose not according to what the people want, but I'm going to come and choose according to what I want and to what I think is right. And that's really important for us, isn't it?

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How many times have we gone and said, okay, I can see this principle that we need to establish because I can read the scriptures or because I've heard it from church or I've heard it from a friend or whatever, and now I'm going to go and make my own way to make it happen. Instead of waiting on the instruction of God. Where we try and force our own way into God's purposes and into God's sense of it and actually.

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The moving of the spirit comes and because he comes and he speaks to each and every one of us, he is the one that initiates. He is the first initiator of everything. It is true. It is true.

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And I just felt the challenge for me, you know, we've been talking about the Word of the Lord that came to us about the wave of God that is going to come crashing over this church and this community and this town and this region. And we've seen little tastes of it, but we have not seen it in all of its fullness. We have not seen it in all of its fullness. And so the question that we've had as we have been talking, just as leaders together, the question as I've been praying is just not

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How do I posture myself in this? What do I do now? Because I literally... I don't know, we don't know. If you've got any thoughts then please let us know. But we don't just want thoughts, we want to the word of the Lord. And we have to be those that are open and receptive to the word of the Lord no matter what it brings.

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no matter what it brings. There's much that can be said about that, but I'm going to move on. The kingdom starts at the heart. So let's read on.

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So Samuel did as the Lord instructed him. When he arrived at Bethlehem the elders of the town came trembling to meet him. What's wrong they asked? Do you come in peace? Samuel was a big name and if Samuel comes to your tiny little village they're expecting trouble. So that's why they're afraid here. Surely there's going to be some kind of judgment this past night.

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Yes, and Samuel replied I have come to sacrifice to the Lord purify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice Then Samuel performed the purification right for Jesse and his sons and he invited them to sacrifice too When they arrived Samuel took one look at Eliab and thought surely this is the Lord's anointing I've watched the first episode of that House of David I've watched a couple of episodes of it and Eliab does look like the Lord's anointing my goodness

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There's muscles coming out of places where muscles shouldn't be coming out of. He's handsome, he's clever, he's smart. Have you ever thought that about people where you've met them and you've gone, surely the hand of the Lord is upon Jeff? It's like, me! That's me! Muscles coming out of places.

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And so Eliab here is this guy who just looks like the most handsome. Surely this is the person.

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and it's Saul all over again. So even Samuel, the prophet of the Lord, is falling into the same trap that all the people fell into, that they all fell into before. But he's listening to what God says. So we carry on. But the Lord said to Samuel, Don't judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn't see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. This is...

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One of the most radical things I think that we can, if we really believe us, we will live in freedom. If we really believed this, we would live in freedom.

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Because this is tapping into all of the stuff that we mentioned before about Saul. Where Saul is looking to all of these other things for his power, for his authority, for his wealth, his security, for his identity, all of this kind of thing. Because he thought that what was projected outwards was the most important thing. And yet God comes and says, I don't look at all of those outward things. I look at what's really important. I look at what's inside.

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And one of the consequences of the fall of sin is that it's corrupted what our priorities are so that we look to make ourselves seem better than we actually are in order to put other people down. That's the reality of that, that we better ourselves to put other people down rather than just thinking, what is going on in my heart? What is the most important thing in my heart?

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If we really believed that God was just concerned with what was going on with me and not with all of the outward stuff, my god, but I need to do this so that this person thinks this is me or I need to do that so that people can see that I'm actually better than I actually am and all that kind of thing. We would live in freedom because we wouldn't care what anybody would think apart from what God thinks.

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and it completely redefines success for us. It completely redefines how we live our life in the best possible way. People have talked to me about meaning and purpose before and they just want to be able to kind of do well, I guess, and be successful. That in and of itself is not a bad thing, but if that becomes the overriding priority, then it completely warps the role that God has in our life. So I said, and as we've talked,

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If God comes and says to you that you just need now to sit on that chair for the rest of your life. If that's the word of the Lord, it's not. It's not. But if God said that you need to do that, you could go and see thousands of people saved. You could go and establish hospitals. You could go and create life-changing cancer treatments. You could do all of these things, which you could earn billions of pounds. You could have four and a half tons of talents of gold to come and bring.

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but you've not done what the Lord has defined as successful and so we have all of this stuff that the world comes and perceives as something that is successful and those things aren't bad but if we're chasing after those things rather than the pleasure of him we're completely warping

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the way it is that we should live. And actually we become trapped by those things. We become trapped in bondage by those things. God looks at the heart, not at the outward appearance.

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The kingdom grows in the hidden place. So let's carry on. Verse 8. Then Jesse told his son Abinadab to step forward and walk in front of Samuel. But Samuel said, This is not the one the Lord has chosen. Next, Jesse summoned Shimeah. But Samuel said, Neither is this the one

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was chosen. In the same way all seven of Jesse's sons were presented to Samuel but Samuel said to Jesse the Lord has not chosen any of these. Then Samuel asked are these all the sons that you have? There is still the youngest Jesse replied but he's out in the fields watching the sheep and goats. Send for him at once Samuel said we will not sit down to eat until he arrives. So Jesse said for him he was dark in hat sir with beautiful eyes and the Lord said this

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There's some really, really, I'm going to say interesting stuff here, but it's quite profound. I'm reading from the NLT, some of you if you're reading from ESV or NASB, it might have said in verse 11. And then someone said, these four of your sons, they were still the youngest, Jesse replied, behold.

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he's out in the fields. Does anyone's translation say behold, he's out in the fields? Yeah? ESV. That behold word is a really important word. One of the things the Bible does is it uses words for significant moments and repeats them. And this is one of those words. So behold, the Lord said, my creation is good. You can read that in Genesis 1.31. That's this very same behold.

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is happening it's a behold there's the burning bush there's a revelation that's going to come uh of what God has installed for the people of Israel and we see a behold here taking place as well uh sorry my daughter messed up all of my notes

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That behold word comes at critical moments when the kingdom is being revealed in a new and fresh way. And so there's something here taking place, and it's used pretty exclusively in these moments by the way, it's not a very very common word, but pretty exclusively in these moments. And so what we're seeing is behold, behold,

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He's out in the fields watching the sheep and the goats. And this is something that stands in contrast to saw.

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So some of you that might know the story of Saul, it's a little bit strange when he's out searching for the donkeys of Kish and Samuel meets him and says that this is the one that's going to be anointed king of Israel. There's this kind of public ceremony that takes place and when it's time for Saul to come out and to be anointed as king, he's caught hiding in the baggage. That is a behold, he's hiding in the baggage. And so you also have moments where behold is used in negatives.

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situations as well. So one of those situations that it's used is, behold, Adam and Eve are hiding away. It's the same, behold, that same hiding way which is being used as Saul here. Our ears should be quickly going up above the snakes here all over this. And we should be transplanting, oh no, this is not going to go well here. This is how the story all starts. It also happens when the

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Tower of Babel is being built. And it says, behold, these people are building a tower.

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And what we see take place later on in Saul's life is, as the people of Babel, they build a tower for their own glory, to make a name for themselves. He builds a tower after the victory of the Amalekites, and he says this is to build up his name. And so we see the Tower of Babel language, which is really critical thing in Genesis, being imposed on what Saul is doing here. The same spirit that caused the Tower of Babel, where people were looking to build a tower up to

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so that their name became greater than God was at work in Saul and through Saul when he was building a tower for the name of himself after the victory of the Ammonites.

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That's what you get from that little beholder. It's pretty cool, isn't it? This is why I really believe that the Bible writers were geniuses.

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And we can read this, it seems like children's stories, and it isn't not. It is deeply profound. It is highly, highly sophisticated. And people that read One and Two Saviors in particular will say that this is the peak of some of the ancient world writing ever, because of the sophistication that's taking place. And you can see that in this moment.

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So you see Saul that is hidden amongst the baggage and now you have David who is hidden out amongst the sheep and the goats.

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And yet there's a completely different posture that's taken place because Saul is hiding out of fear and yet David is just completely secure in doing what he's been told to do to guarantee to be a shepherd. Shepherding back in the ancient world was not a glamorous job. It was dirty work. People did not want their children to go and be married to shepherds. was hard work. It was mean work. And yet God comes and he redeems this language where shepherding now becomes the

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The that's used here for David is shepherding the sheep and the goats. It's the main word that's used to describe kinship. It's the main word that's being used to describe kinship. So even here, the biblical authors are coming and saying that David was establishing himself, he was building himself up as a king, just tending after the sheep and the goats in care and compassion and in promise.

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but it's in a place. Thank you.

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It's in a hidden place.

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you have the parable of the leather that was hidden inside the bread and from there it was able to come and affect the whole of us and God will often work in us where he will come and will put us in a hidden place in a place of obscurity to do some work in us so that we can then become the people that he has called us to be that is very difficult I thought

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But even you wouldn't know either.

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spent, me and Bob spent some time in the Philippines working as missionaries. We were there for two and a half years and really became to God. He was very gracious to us and we were able to have a lot of people. And I came back from there thinking I was the bee's knees. It was embarrassing really. I'm cringing a little bit telling you the story now. But I came back and I was intending on applying for jobs and I thought that I would just walk into any graduate job that I could possibly get.

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Because I've been to the Philippines for two and a half years and I've been teaching English and creating my own curriculums and been prospering people and helping people and establishing new things and all that kind of thing. I just thought this is it. This is it. I'm going to walk into a job and then everything's going to be great. And I think I applied for about 50 jobs and I got one interview. I one interview and it was for like a telephone sales job. It was for a group interview. Has anyone ever been to a group

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I was so bad. The people that were interviewing me listening to my presentation, they laughed at me. That's how bad I was. They were laughing at me. And I went out and I was humiliated.

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humiliated, was humbled, and I said, God, what was that all about? What was that all about? And he said, Harry, you ain't got it all yet. I said, I'm sorry, God, I'm sorry. And I ended up getting a job in a care home. And I had a part-time job teaching small children rugby, was called rugby tots. On a Saturday morning, they'd come out and fall over, and try and kick brim-a-balls and all that kind of thing.

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part-time job here as well doing some kind of admin work and cleaning the kitchen and for me that was a time where I felt hidden I guess where God was doing something to refine me to build me up to what God actually wanted and God's still doing that work. don't want to stand here in front of you pretending that I'm imperfect in any way shape or form. I know Jaffa will disagree with that.

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But for me that was a real time of happiness. And particularly coming back from the Philippines and applying for 50 jobs and not getting what I thought that I deserved really was incredibly painful for me. And humiliating. And I tell that story and I cringe every time because it just shows me being not a particularly nice person, I don't think. But God counts and He works in those times.

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and when you're feeling like you're hitting the nail, trust what God is doing. Look to Him rather than anything else. And so David, he was there attending the shepherds, maybe dreaming of greatness. It says that he was able to hear the word of the Lord even with all that weight.

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Maybe Samuel had this school of prophets and seers that went about the countryside, or maybe helped to teach demons to able to do his writing and all that kind of stuff. don't know. Maybe there was that longing in his heart, that desire for something more. He was just there. All of his brothers, sons, to meet the great prophet Samuel, he's not striving to be there. He's just there, looking after the sheep.

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after this.

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The last verse that we'll look at. Verse 13. And so as David stood there among his brothers Samuel took the flask of olive oil he had brought and anointed David with the oil and the spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David from that day on then Samuel returned to Ramaphim. Just saying with confidence, that's the way that you do it. It's of a word. The kingdom works by the spirit's power.

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We see all of this stuff where God is initiating, where God is looking at the heart, where God is working in David in a hidden place. There is nothing that can be achieved by man's own strength and must be done through the Spirit when it comes to the Kingdom. And so for us, we've spoken today about the need for us to come afresh with the will of the Lord who has been brought to us. And if we try and do anything without the Spirit, we are completely lost.

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We are pushing up a rock big enough with no, no, no jets of it cascading over the English Sea. And we need to be people that are hungry for the spirit.

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The Spirit dwells in us, each and every one of us. I've said it before, it completely blows my mind. All of God lives in you. It's a remarkable thing by the Spirit. All of God lives in you. And yet we can do things each and every day that grieve the Holy Spirit. R.T. Kendall says that the sign of the mature Christian is the one that can, um, can detect the grieving of the Spirit in the shortest possible time.

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been a year, month, a week, a day, a second, the moment that you detect that you have grieved the spirit in an action, in a thought, in some kind of behaviour. That ability to turn and to repent, and this is the thing about David, is his ability to repent was completely different to Saul.

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The question of... I had this question, why on earth was the king taken away from Saul and not from David? David did worse things than Saul. Saul just kept the sacrifices and didn't kill the king, he didn't want to humiliate him and all that kind of stuff. David committed adultery and then killed the husband of the guy, of Beth Sheba. That's pretty terrible. To me, in many respects, that seems worse than... what's the difference here? But David was...

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contrite and repented and didn't care about his name. As soon as he recognized that he did something wrong, he repented and deathed him and actually did it perfectly for all the people to see. And so there is a heart posture there that leads to restoration and we saw that didn't exist.

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The kingdom works by the Spirit's power. Okay, my last slide, and we're not going to read the rest of that, I think that the kingdom advances. The Spirit of the Lord comes upon David, and the first thing that David does is he is called to menace the soul who is disturbed in a place of chaos. says that he's being troubled by a spirit.

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And again this is the grace of God working through our heart. God removes his spirit from his soul and places his spirit in David. And a troubled spirit comes and disturbs, disturbs all. And the means for Saul to find peace and to find comfort is in the very man who the spirit of the Lord has called.

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The Spirit of God comes and he's not immediately going out and killing Saul and claiming his kingship. He's not going out and defeating the Philistines and extending the Kingdom of Israel. The very first thing that he does is that he picks up a harp and he sings and he brings peace and he brings comfort. He moves not with a weapon but with worship.

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And it's this completely upside down lecture of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom comes and invents it in a way that we wouldn't necessarily expect. And yet, what happens here is that darkness is pushed out, chaos no longer walks in the rains, and the order of God comes in because the man with the spirit of the Lord is coming to that situation, has a minister in that situation, and he's been able to bring that peace. m

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Kingdom of God advances always. And that's really important for us to understand because we can talk about the hiddenness of the Kingdom, we can talk about how God looks at the heart, but the crux of it all is that God's purpose for restoration and for reconciliation doesn't just affect me, the Gospel is for all people. oh

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And in all of this stuff, the whole point of it is for the whole of creation to be returned to what it was originally intended, where we as a people, as humanity, can delight in the very presence of God. Where once again we can walk in the Garden of Eden together with him, in peace and in harmony, with no tears, with no pain, with no suffering.

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It is not our ticket to make ourselves better and more successful. We are just falling into pagan idolatry if that's the way that we treat God. God, I will do this and you will bless me. God is a God of calm and relationship and he wants relationship with all people and by his wisdom, which to me sometimes doesn't seem wise, but I trust him, he's chosen me as a vehicle to share that love and to share good news with all people.

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And so in all of this, in all of what God is doing, in all of these principles of the Kingdom, we have to hold in mind that we are those that are establishing the Kingdom by the power of this light for God's good purposes. I'm going to invite the Washington team to come up and they're just going to lead us in a summary of response.

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I think we're going to do King of My Heart, is that right, James? Yeah. I love King of My Heart. Give me a song with a crescendo and I absolutely love it. But I think this song is really great for what we've been talking about here. And I'd just like you all to stand if that's okay.

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And just as we've been talking here...

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I just want to give a learning to the spirit to come into... just to reveal to us if there are aspects in our life where we've been striving to live like Saul, putting our trust in things that haven't been helpful for us in understanding the kingdom and actually distorting our understanding of the kingdom, where we've been trapped by what other people think about us, where we've been...

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bound by and looking to get our security from any other means other than from God.

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Whether it's in deception of who we are or that sense of identity. It could be any means of other things. But Lord, we want to come to you, we want to posture ourselves towards you. We want to repent of anything that is not of you. We want our whole beings to be formed by you.

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not formed by the ways of this world. And so Father, I ask that by your Spirit you would just come, that you convict where we need to be convicted, but not that we could be those that will go on and go further in the purposes of your kingdom. And as David, it starts just in the hidden field, shepherding those sheep and those goats.

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And Lord we come and we stand before you and it feels like we are just that small little thing. It feels like we have maybe nothing to break. As the yeast comes and affects the whole life, Lord we trust your promise that the kingdom that you have placed in us, that little leaven.

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that we have will come and affect all of our community, that will come and affect all of our society. Lord, that we will see the complete redemption of this culture. Lord, that we would see the complete restoration of all of your creation. Because of the work that you were doing through us, your people, your church, your beautiful, glorious bride. And so, as we come and as we sing this song, spirit just come.

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Speak to us, comfort us, encourage us, exalt us, convict us, challenge us, provoke us. Initiate us. oh

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because we want to see your kingdom come and your will done on earth just as it is in heaven. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.