1 Samuel 12
Michael Lawrence
August 4, 2024
Hinson Baptist Church Sermons
Our Faithful God - The Lord’s Witness
Are you persuadable? I think a lot of us would say that we probably work pretty hard against being persuadable. We don't want to be taken advantage of. We don't want to be fooled, snookred. And yet all of us recognize on our best days that not all of our opinions are right, not all of our commitments are true. We know basic humility teaches us that we ought to be able to change our mind. Do you? Can you? Are you persuadable? You know, presidential campaigns are asking that question right now, as they try to figure out if they can persuade you to vote for their particular candidate or maybe change your mind. If you're a parent, your kids are always thinking about this. As they're trying to figure out how can I convince mom or dad to give me what I want, whether that's a puppy, when you're eight, or a car, when you're 18, you know, either way, kids are constantly thinking, how can I persuade mom and dad to give me what I want? And of course, this is what I do every week. And anybody else who preaches from this pulpit every week, a preacher stands up here and attempts to persuade you, to move you, to trust and follow Jesus Christ. Whatever the issue, whether it's giving your kid a puppy or deciding to follow Jesus, whatever the issue is, what does it actually take to change your mind? What does it actually take to move and motivate your decision? Is there any difference in persuading you to choose a candidate for elective office and persuading you to choose to follow Jesus as your Lord and God? Is the art of preaching, what I'm engaging in right now, is it basically just a religious version of what politicians do in their stump speeches and what marketers and advertising executives do all the time? This morning, we're going to take a close look at what I do as a preacher. We're going to sort of pull the curtain back as it were and let you see what's going on with the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. The reason we're doing this today is because in about a week and a half, I'm going to be doing this again at a preacher's conference. I'm going to be speaking to a bunch of preachers on this topic and you get to hear the first version of it. I mean, you're going to help me make it better. But I'm also hopeful that this is helpful for you. As we think about what I do as a preacher, we're going to do this against the backdrop of the very last sermon that the prophet Samuel gave in 1 Samuel, chapter 12. As we think about what I do and compare it to what he did, I really want you to consider what does it take to persuade you? What does it take to persuade you to follow Jesus? What does it take to persuade you to keep following Jesus? So turn with me to 1 Samuel, chapter 12. If you're using one of the Bibles that we provided, those Bibles and the pews and the chairs around you, this is found on page 242, 242. We're going to look at all of 1 Samuel, chapter 12. I'm going to read just the first two verses to get us started. So 1 Samuel, 12, verses 1 and 2. Then Samuel said to all Israel, "I have carefully listened to everything you said to me and placed a king over you. Now you can see that the king is leading you. As for me, I am old and gray and my sons are here with you. I have led you from my youth until now." Okay, so that's the setting. We'll just stop right there real quick. That's the setting. Let me fill you in. So this is a major turning point in Israel's history. Samuel is the last judge of Israel. That line of judges actually begins with Moses, who was the first judge of Israel and all the judges after him kind of came in his model, combining two different roles, the role of ruler or leader and the role of prophet. But we've come to this moment in Israel's history where Israel has said, "Yeah, yeah, we're done with that. We want a king like all the other nations." And Samuel was first really offended by this because he knew that they were rejecting him and they were rejecting God, but God said, "No, no, no, no, do what they say." And so following the Lord's instructions, Samuel has given them what they asked for. He's given them a king in the person of Saul. That's what was going on in the couple of chapters right before this. And now he stands before them at the end of his life. He's old and gray. His grown sons are standing next to him. And he's no longer a judge. He's just a prophet. He's just a preacher. And he has a message to deliver to them. He wants to persuade them here at the end of his ministry to worship the Lord wholeheartedly. And as we're going to see, he's going to give it everything he has. We're going to consider kind of three different elements that he brings to the task of persuading Israel to follow the Lord. But what we're also going to see is that something more is needed. This is what I think this chapter demonstrates is what I want to convince you of this morning. The preacher's aim is persuasion. The persuasion isn't enough. His aim is persuasion. I'm going to try to persuade you of something this morning. And every week I'm up here. My efforts at persuasion are not enough. Something more will be needed. And it again leaves you with the question, are you persuadable? And what would need to happen so that you would be? All right. So we're going to look at these three different elements that Samuel brings to the task of persuading people to follow the Lord. And the first one is the preacher's character. The preacher's character. Let's pick it up with verse three. Here I am, "Bring charges against me before the Lord and his anointed. Whose ox or donkey have I taken? Whom have I wronged or mistreated? From whom have I accepted a bribe to overlook something? I will return it to you. You have it wronged us. You haven't mistreated us and you haven't taken anything from anyone," they responded. He said to them, "The Lord is a witness against you and his anointed is a witness today that you have not found anything in my hand. He is a witness," they said. Then Samuel said to the people, "The Lord who appointed Moses and Aaron and who brought your ancestors up from the land of Egypt is a witness." The first task of any preacher is to convince his audience to listen to him for one minute more. I figure I've got like three or four minutes tops to pull you in. And that's what Samuel's got too, right? So he's got to convince them to listen to them to him because he's got some hard things that he's going to say to them a little bit later. He's got to convince them to listen to him. And so what does he do right away? He appeals to his character. Verse three, "Here I am. Bring charges against me before the Lord and his anointed. What have I done wrong? Have I wronged you? Have I mistreated you? Have I enriched myself at your expense? Tell me because if I have, I'm going to make it right. I will return it to you," he says. Can you imagine a political leader doing something like that today, standing up before whatever crowd he's in for him saying, "All right, tell me what I've done wrong and I will make it right. Tell me how I mistreated you. Tell me how I've burdened you as a leader and I will fix it." No. But that's what Samuel does. And what do the people say? They say, verse four, "You haven't wronged us. You haven't mistreated us. You haven't taken anything from anyone. The people vindicate him." So he points to his character and he says, "What have I done wrong?" And I'm not just going to defend myself. I'm going to put it out there in front of you. You can say whatever you want. And they come back and they say, "Actually, you've been a really good leader. You haven't wronged us at all." Now, just to make sure, Samuel asks them to swear to it in verse five. And he calls the Lord as a witness and they agree. And then Samuel confirms it in verse six, the Lord is a witness to Samuel's integrity. It's a really bold and striking move to start a sermon. That's what Samuel does. Now, centuries later, centuries after this, a Greek fellow named Aristotle would write one of the most famous treatments on the art of persuasion. And this is where he starts. The ethos, he said, the distinguishing character of the public speaker is what causes people to give them a listen in the first place. What is it about the speaker that makes the audience trust him and continue to listen to him? Maybe you think, "Oh, this guy's worth listening to." Well, Samuel didn't need to read Aristotle to know the answer to the question. He stood there as a prophet of God, a preacher with a message from God. Now, if he were there to give them a theology lecture, maybe he would have started with all of his degrees and the fancy schools that he went to, demonstrating why you should listen to this theology lecture. Or if he were there to teach them how to build some grand, magnificent temple, he might have pointed to all the other great buildings that he had built, but he wasn't there to give them a lecture, and he wasn't there to teach them a skill. He was there to call them to fear God and to worship him only. And who wants to listen to a message about that from a man who doesn't fear God himself? And why should you listen to me or any other preacher that stands in this pulpit weekend and week out? Hopefully I know a little bit more about the Bible and can shed some light on the Bible if you're interested in the Bible. Hopefully whoever stands here is a halfway decent public speaker and doesn't bore you and put you to sleep. But ultimately, you should listen to me speak about God because it is evident that I am following God myself, and if that is not evident, you should stop listening to me. Of course, not perfectly. I would never claim that that is too high a bar for anyone, but clearly and evidently. I think this is why it's so important that churches, elders, pastors, preachers live among the people so that you can see our lives. Tell if we know what we're talking about. I think this is why when Paul lays out the qualifications for an elder in 1 Timothy 3, it's only one skill that the elder must have. He needs to be able to teach. That's a skill, not everybody can do it. We've all met people who know how to do something really well but can't explain it to anybody. Yeah, so an elder has to be able to teach, but that's the only skill an elder apparently needs to have. All the rest of the things that Paul lists in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 is character. It's character. The credibility of the message cannot be separated from the credibility of the messenger. It's like an iron law. So let me speak for a moment to the elders here at Hinson Baptist Church and those of you who aspire to be teachers in the church. Paul says in 1 Timothy 4 verse 16, "To watch your life and your doctrine." Brothers, let us watch our lives. Give yourself to growing in grace and godliness in a way that this congregation can see it. One of the ways that we talk about that is elders should be the chief repenters in the church. When we blow it, we should own it. We should be willing to confess it. Brothers, invite accountability and correction into your life. And do it early. Do it long before you ever become an elder. For those of you that are aspiring to this role, go ahead and make it a habit to be inviting correction and accountability into your life because it only gets harder to accept it once you're in public. I know in my case, I've got a couple of different groups of guys that I meet with regularly. I talk to regularly that I've tried to make an effort to make sure they know everything about my life and can ask me any question they want. I wish it kept me from sinning, it doesn't. My wife and kids wished it kept me from sinning, it doesn't. Oh, but I shudder to think about my life without them, without that accountability and correction. Brothers prioritize your own spiritual growth and moral integrity, guard your reputation. Because really as preachers and teachers of God's Word, we've only got two things. We've got God's Word and we've got our reputation. We've got our credibility. So guard it. If not for your sake, for the sake of this church, we all know how devastating it is when someone who has been held up as an elder and a leader in God's people falls into sin. Because it seems to call into question everything that they've said. Now, I don't want you to misunderstand the truth of your message, the truth of the message that I'm preaching this morning, the truth of the teaching that you hear from the elders, the truth of their message is not determined by their character. As Paul says in Romans 3, "Let God be true even though everyone is a liar." The truth of the message is not determined by our character, but who, why would anyone believe the message that Jesus Christ changes lives if it's not evident that our lives have been changed? Now, brothers and sisters, this is not just a message for elders and preachers. I think it applies to you, too. Does the character of your life encourage your unbelieving friends and family members to listen to your words? The Apostle John says, "The person who says, 'I have come to know him,' and yet doesn't keep his commands, is a liar. And if anyone says, 'I love God,' and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar." I think most of the non-Christians around us don't need to read 1 John to know that that's true. If people are to believe us, if they're to be persuaded to follow Jesus, whether we're speaking from a pulpit like I am this morning or we're just talking to somebody over a cup of coffee, our character, our ethos matters because it's our character, it's the example of our lives that actually is proof that the gospel saves sinners and changes them. So Samuel begins his effort to persuade by pointing to himself. But while character is important, character alone is not sufficient. So let's consider the second thing Samuel does. Let's consider the preacher's argument. The preacher's argument. We'll pick it up in verse 7. Now present yourselves, "So I may confront you before the Lord about all the righteous acts He has done for you and your ancestors." When Jacob went to Egypt, your ancestors cried out to the Lord and he sent the Moses and Aaron who led your ancestors out of Egypt and settled them in this place. But they forgot the Lord their God. So he handed them over to Cicera, commander of the army of Hazor, to the Philistines and to the king of Moab. These enemies fought against them. Then they cried out to the Lord and said, "We have sinned for we have abandoned the Lord and worshiped the bales and the asterisks. Now rescue us from the power of our enemies and we will serve you." So the Lord sent Jerabal, Barak, Jephthah and Samuel. He rescued you from the power of the enemies around you and you lived securely. Now when you saw that Nahash, king of the Ammonites, was coming against you, you said to me, "No, we must have a king reign over us even though the Lord your God is your king." Now here is the king you've chosen, the one you requested. Look, this is the king the Lord has placed over you. If you fear the Lord, worship and obey Him and if you don't rebel against the Lord's command, then both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God. However, if you disobey the Lord and rebel against His command, the Lord's hand will be against you as it was against your ancestors. This is the heart of Samuel's argument. If the Lord was called as witness to vindicate Samuel's integrity, now Samuel is a witness to vindicate the Lord and what he calls all his righteous acts there in verse 7 towards his people. His argument here is not a philosophical argument, it's not a theoretical argument, it's not an apologetic argument, it's not even really all that overtly theological. His argument is fundamentally a moral and religious argument and we see it there in verses 14 and 15. If you fear the Lord, worship and obey Him and if you don't rebel against the Lord's command, then both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God and by implication know all of the Lord's blessings, all of his kindness. But if you disobey and rebel, he goes on to say, the Lord will be against you just as he is against your ancestors. Samuel is arguing for, he is calling the people to covenant faithfulness, to worship God and God only, to obey his commands, to follow him with all of their heart and soul and he offers reasons for his argument. This is basic to the task of persuasion, Aristotle called this the logos, we would call it like the logic of persuasion. If I want to persuade you that Lordo's has the best sandwiches in Portland, then I better have some compelling reasons to back that up, right? Now, not if I'm talking to Daniel, like Daniel was already convinced. We took Daniel to Lordo's for our farewell staff lunch, I think he went to Lordo's like six times in his last week here. He was already convinced that they had the best sandwiches in Portland, but you might be new, you might think, well, I mean, they're okay, but maybe there's some better ones. Well, no, no, if I'm going to make that claim and if I want to persuade you, I better back it up, I better bring some reasons. Well it's no different when I want to persuade you to follow Jesus. I better have some reasons and those reasons should be compelling, but note the kind of reasons that Samuel brings to bear. He recounts verse seven, "The Righteous Acts of God in History." Now to the modern mind, God talked like that, talking about what God has done is just an exercise in make-belief. It's an exercise in projection, wish fulfillment. Maybe, at best, it's just an exercise in you expressing your own subjective religious experience, but that's not the way Samuel saw it and it's not the way I see it. The God of the Bible is the God who acts in time and space and he doesn't just act and then leave us guessing. Was that God? Did God do something there? Like, what should we make of that? No, he acts in history and then he reveals through his prophets and ultimately in his word what he did and what it meant. God testifies to himself, through his actions and through his word and so what does Samuel do? Well he starts at the end of Genesis. He starts with the family of Jacob going down to Egypt and then their deliverance from their oppression in Egypt through the leadership of Aaron and Moses at the Exodus and then being brought into the promised land there in verse 8. He gets basically the endogenesis, all of Exodus, some of the numbers and Joshua in one verse. I know you all wish I could be that concise. And then beginning in verse 9 he gives kind of a quick summary of the book of Judges from verses 9 to 11 and he talks about how they kept going back to worship the idols and God kept handing them over to their oppressors but then they would cry out and God would raise up for them a deliverer, a judge, a rescuer and he gives us their names. Jerobo that's Gideon, that's another name for Gideon and Beric and Jephthah and Samuel though I think probably we should read that as Samson. Anyway, he reminds them of all that's happened in their history recorded in the book of Judges and that brought them up to the present day. And the request for a king to fight against Nahash, king of the Ammonites there in verse 12. And you can see what he's doing here, the temptation is clear, are you just going to repeat, what your ancestors did, are we going to go through all of this all over again? Will they depend on their king, kind of setting him up as an idol? Or will they depend on their God? Samuel argues from history, from God's own testimony in his word about himself, folks God has not changed. So if you cry out to God, if you depend on him, he will deliver you from this Ammonite king. But if you disobey the Lord, if you rebel, if you begin to trust in your idols, if you begin to put all your hope in this human king, rather than God, then God is going to hand you over to your enemies just as he did repeatedly in the past. You see what Samuel's doing there? He's making an argument for God, but he's not making up the reasons. He's appealing to what God has already done. Friends, I don't make up arguments for God or about God. My job as a preacher is simply to stand here and repeat to you the argument that God has already made for himself through his actions in history as it's revealed in God's word. And nowhere has God spoken more clearly, more compellingly in history than at the cross of Jesus Christ. Time and time again, as Samuel points out, God raised up deliverers to rescue his people. And now he's given them a king, and the king is supposed to fight their battles for them, but the kings, as we know, as you kind of read the history, the kings are going to prove faithful either. And so finally, God sent a deliverer, a rescuer. You see, none of those other rescues, none of those other deliverances actually worked or lasted because at the end of the day, the problem wasn't external. The problem was internal. The people, no matter who God gave them, the people kept going back to their idols, they kept going back to their sin. And so God sends a rescuer, a king, a deliverer who could actually defeat that internal enemy, who could defeat both our sin and the death that our sin deserves. As God became a man in the person of Jesus Christ and on the cross, he defeated sin. It looked like he was losing. The Romans who were oppressing Israel were putting this guy to death, but in fact, Jesus was winning. He was winning the battle. He was defeating sin and Satan and to prove it, he defeated death itself, having exhausted God's wrath against us on the cross. Three days later, God raised Jesus from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit, proving that sin and death no longer had a claim on our lives so that anyone who today cries out to the Lord in repentance and faith can be finally and fully and forever rescued from the power of your greatest enemy in order to worship your greatest friend, the one who died for you. Friend, if you're not a believer, if you don't understand yourself to be a Christian, this is what I want to persuade you of. I don't want to persuade you to vote for somebody. I don't want to persuade you to try harder and be better. I want to persuade you that Jesus has defeated what you cannot defeat in your own life, your own sin, that Jesus is able to rescue you from the one thing that you cannot rescue yourself from, and that is your own death. And so I would plead with you to cry out today, to put your faith in Jesus Christ. Now I understand, that's a big ask. And this may be the first time somebody's asked you to do that this directly. You might not be ready to do that today. I would love it if you'd come and talk to me. I'd love it if you'd take one of these books that we mentioned at the start of the service so that you can think more deeply about the reasons that I've put forth before you. But make no mistake, God has acted in history. He has acted to save you if you will cry out to him. Today is the day to do that. Paul said, "Preach the Word in season and out of season." He didn't say, "Preach prosperity." He didn't say, "Preach morals." He didn't say, "Preach politics." He didn't say, "Preach reformation." He said, "Preach the Word." Why? Why do we preach the Word? Because the Word, the Scriptures are God's Word. His own inspired revelation about what He has done in history. The Bible is not about you, but the Bible is for you. God's argument about Himself based on what He has done can make you wise unto salvation. It can be profitable for you, equipping you for every good word. This is the way Paul describes it in 2 Timothy chapter 3. So Christian, preach the Word to yourself. Preach what God has already done for you to yourself. Don't preach to yourself, try harder. Don't preach to yourself, be better. Some of you have been watching the Olympics, and you might have seen that piece on the swimmer, Dressel, who was utterly crippled by this inner critic in his head that constantly told him what a failure he was and how he needed to try harder to be better. The man holds or held, no, I think he still holds. The world record in the event that he swims. This example is extreme, but it's not unusual. All of us do this. We preach to ourselves a message of try harder, be better. You should have done that. Friends, that's not going to change your life. Christian, that's not going to help you grow. Do you know what will change your life? Come to yourself what God has done for you. Preach the gospel to yourself. Remind yourself of his righteous acts for you. Remind yourself of who he is, what he's done, what he's going to do, and you will see your life change. Samuel points to his character. If he makes an argument rooted, not in what they should do, but what God has already done and will do, but he does one more thing as he's trying to convince them to follow God. He brings what Aristotle called pathos. He makes an emotional appeal to their benefit. So let's look third at the preacher's passion. Look at verse 20. Samuel replied, "Don't be afraid. Even though you have committed all this evil, don't turn away from following the Lord, instead worship the Lord with all your heart. Don't turn away to follow worthless things that can't profit or rescue you. If they are worthless, the Lord will not abandon his people because of his great name and because he is determined to make you his own people. As for me, I vow that I will not sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you. I will teach you the good and right way. Above all, fear the Lord and worship him faithfully with all your heart. Consider the great things he has done for you. However, if you continue to do what is evil, both you and your king will be swept away." Samuel now at the end of his sermon appeals to their hearts. And he does it in two ways. First he reminds them of God's faithfulness. You see that there in verse 20, don't be afraid. Why would they be afraid? Because they've sinned against God. Because no, don't be afraid, turn to the very God that you just sinned against and what you're going to find is he won't abandon you. Other things, other things are worthless. They're not going to rescue you. Verse 21, they're not going to profit you anything. No turn to God. For the sake of his reputation, he says there in verse 22, his great name. And because he has determined, he's decided and he doesn't change his mind, he's decided to make you his own, he will rescue you. Friends our confidence in following God, our confidence that giving our lives to the Lord will be to our benefit is not finally found in us. It's found in God and that is such good news. If his love for us were conditioned on our loveliness, our faithfulness, our goodness, we would be forever afraid. We would be forever unsure. We would be forever anxious. But it's not. Samuel holds out the goodness and the faithfulness and the tenderness of God to us and he appeals to us to trust that. Lean into this God who will not abandon you, who loves you. That is so hard for us to get our minds around because it's not the way our relationships work, is it? We like people because they're likable. We love people because they're lovable and we kind of assume God works the same way. But praise God he is not like us. You know I think the closest analogy we have to this is marriage where a man and woman come together and they promise to love for better, for worse, for richer, for poor, in sickness and in health till death do us part. Marriage is a commitment between two people to love even when your spouse isn't being lovely, even when they haven't been lovely in quite some time. Marriage is a commitment not to abandon the relationship, even when it gets hard. I think this is why the Bible uses marriage and even this language of abandonment which is one of the synonyms for divorce in the Old Testament. It's why the Bible uses the picture of marriage to talk to us about God because this kind of covenantal love between a husband and a wife is like a pale reflection, a faint echo of God's love for his people. Samuel appeals to that love and he calls us to lean into it. God loves you in Jesus Christ not because you're lovely. So be at ease, be at peace, he loves you because he loves you, because he's just decided to. That's the kind of God he is and he does not change. But then Samuel does this really surprising thing. He makes a second appeal to their benefit and that second appeal is rooted in Samuel's love for them and Samuel's faithfulness to them. You see that there in verse 23 and where he says, look, I promise you. I'm not going to sin against God by failing to pray for you. I'm going to pray for you and I'm not just going to pray for you. I'm going to keep teaching you. I'm going to teach you the right way to go. I'm going to keep walking with you as I try to persuade you to walk with God. Can you imagine how that must have fallen on their ears at that moment? They had just rejected Samuel. They had rejected Samuel and said, we don't want you anymore. We want a king. I think no one would have blamed Samuel at that point for saying, you guys clearly aren't safe. So I'm just going to keep my distance. I'll maybe mail my sermons in, but I won't get too close to you, because you kick and you bite and you're mean. That's not what he does. In the midst of them rejecting him, he leans in and he assures them that God won't abandon you and neither will I. Elders, as we lead this church, as we point this congregation to God's unfailing love, do our people, the gathered, people gathered here this morning, do our people also know how much we love them? We heard about that in the reading earlier from Thessalonians about how Paul shared his very life with the Thessalonians, because he loved them. Now in some ways, that's not so surprising. He only had like three weeks with the Thessalonians. There wasn't a lot of time for them to get ornery with them. So I'm also reminded of what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 6 verses 11 and 12. Our heart has been open wide. We are not withholding our affection from you. Paul's saying that to a church that had been downright mean to him, not just once, but over and over again. Church, your elders love you. How do I know that? How do you know that? I wish all of you could come to an elders meeting and hear your elders pray for you as we do every meeting that we have. You hear it in the prayers and the public services. You hear it in the prayers on Sunday evening. I hope you hear their love for you as they teach you in Sunday classes and other contexts. I think many of them, it'd be much easier to just spend the day on the lake on a Saturday afternoon rather than preparing a lesson for Sunday morning. It's love that motivates them to do that. You can see it when they show up at the hospital or in the small groups that they're in with you or when they come by your home, just to check in on you. It may not feel like it, but they actually are loving you when they gently rebuke you or correct you when they say no to you, even when they ask you, "Where have you been? Haven't seen you in a while?" I know that might not feel like love, but it actually is because they know for your sake how important it is that God's people gather regularly. All of these things point to their love for you, but I just want to say it. I love you. As your pastor, I love you, and it's why it took Dan so long to leave. He's been talking about being a lead pastor for several years, but he loved you and it was hard to tear himself away. Your elders love you. Your pastors love you. If we don't say that enough, well, that's on us because we should. More than anything else, I want you to see it in us and hear it from us. What we want for you more than anything else is what Samuel wanted, there in verse 24 that you would fear the Lord and worship him faithfully with all your art considering the great things he has done for you. Samuel brought everything to bear, everything he had to persuade Israel to follow the Lord, and that's what I do every time I step into the pulpit. I bring my character, which you see because I live among you. I bring my arguments from the Word, and I bring my passion, my love for you. And I seek to persuade you to be reconciled to God and then to keep following him with all of your heart, and you would think that that would be enough. After all, it's enough to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate or to get your kid that puppy. But it's not. It's not enough. My aim is persuasion, but my persuasion is not enough to get you to follow God. If it were, chapter 12 would have played out quite differently. Samuel would have moved from character to argument to passion and appeal, and then the people would have said, "We're convinced! We're going to follow God! We're going to fear him!" But it's not what happened. It's never that way. It never happens that way. What happened then and what always must happen are the verses I skipped over, because in the middle of Samuel's work to persuade the Lord himself steps in, and the Lord acts, and he seals the deal. So we conclude finally with the Lord's witness, which is the title of this sermon. Look at verse 16 of chapter 12. Now therefore, present yourselves and see this great thing that the Lord will do before your eyes. Isn't the wheat harvest today? I will call on the Lord, and he will send thunder and rain so that you will recognize what an immense evil you committed in the Lord's sight by requesting a king for yourselves. Samuel called on the Lord, and on that day the Lord sent thunder and rain. As a result, all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel. They pleaded with Samuel, "Pray to the Lord your God for your servants so we won't die, for we have added to all our sins the evil of requesting a king for ourselves." In Israel, just like in Portland, there's wet season and there's dry season. There are really only two seasons. Israel had two wet seasons and two dry seasons, and the wheat harvest comes in the dry season, and the two seasons don't mix. But all of a sudden, Samuel prays, and there's thunder, and there's lightning, and there's rain in response to Samuel's prayer. God steps in and does what only God can do. He does the humanly impossible, and the people are convinced. They're convinced before he even gets to the end of his sermon. We're told there in verse 18, "As a result, all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel. They confess their sin in asking for a king. They plead for mercy in verse 19, and this is the way it always is. I can argue and appeal and persuade all day, every day. I can give myself to be the most persuasive preacher there ever was. I can master all the tools of rhetoric. I can know my Bible inside and out. But unless the Lord acts in your heart, you will not be persuaded. You will not change. You will not worship the Lord and follow Him with your whole heart." Friends the good news is that God continues to act. He has already acted in history, decisively doing the impossible. Jesus Christ got up from the dead and the power of the Holy Spirit, and God continues to work by that same spirit, giving resurrection life to His people, so that they turn and call on His name and are saved. If anyone responds to the message of the gospel, it is because God has taken the initiative and given you ears to hear, giving you a heart soft to receive. Here's how Paul puts it. My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with the demonstration of the Spirit's power so that your faith might not be based on human wisdom, but on God's power. Jesus said the same thing, but in a different way, He said, "Look, you see the wind? You can tell it's blowing, but you have no idea where it comes from, and you're not in control of it. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit of God. The Spirit must act. The Spirit must persuade. The Spirit must give ears and soft hearts." And so you ask perhaps, "Well, where do we see this demonstration of the Spirit's power today? Should we expect the preacher to preach and then pray and, I don't know, the building shakes or something?" No. I would suggest that what you should do is look around. I would suggest to you that according to the New Testament, it is this church, you guys, that are a demonstration of the Spirit's power today. That's the way Paul talks about the church in Ephesians chapter 3, a display of God's wisdom. A congregation of people who have been changed by God, whose love for one another defies natural explanation, whose lives of repentance and faith, humility and service, love and sacrifice prove that God means what He says, that He saves sinners and changes them. We saw it yesterday when we were packing Dan up to leave us. And some brand new members, people that don't really even know Dan showed up to help. Why would they do that? I see it in the way many of you give yourselves to go and visit our older men and women in the congregation or shut in who can't gather anymore. These are people that can't do anything for you. And yet you give up your time and you go and you pray with them and you sing hymns to them. I've seen it in the way people have walked into our coffee shop down the street and met some Christians and before long they're following Jesus. God is at work. God is at work in history. God is at work today, in and through you, but unless God works nothing happens. Persuasion is my aim, but persuasion is not enough without the Lord's powerful witness to Himself, in the empty tomb, in the spiritual generating work, in the life of this local church, no one would ever believe this message, no one would ever be convinced. But praise God, that the God who is active with Samuel is active today in response to His people's prayers, church, join me in praying, pray every Sunday morning before you come. The God would work through the preaching of His word. Join us on Sunday evenings to pray that God would work and act through His people calling the nations to Himself. Praise God that He continues to act, that He continues to convince, that He continues to convict, that He continues to bend proud hearts to soften them, to give us ears to hear so that we might hear His words of love in the gospel and be persuaded that they are words of love for you and me. Are you persuadable? Pray that you might be. Would you pray with me now? We ask that you would indeed give us ears to hear your words of love. We pray that you would give us eyes to see a demonstration of love, even in the supper that we are about to eat together, or we pray that you would act, that you would save, that you would rescue, and that you would do that today. We ask this in Christ's name, amen. [ Silence ]