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Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida. Clearly declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the air. You can reach us toll-free. You can reach us toll free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made through the Bibleline website at calvaryoftampa.org. We pray that you’ll enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

So God did a wonderful thing in a young man’s life. Totally turned him around. He had no idea that God had all these wonderful things in store for him. So God raised him up and wanted him king and gave him the Holy Spirit and allowed him to prophesy. He had a Samuelate side that would speak to God and intercede for him. And so he had it all set up for it. He didn’t have to do anything to get it.

And even at the very beginning, he honored the Lord and he served the Lord. it wasn’t long before things began to change. And when those things changed, just remember this. Out of this little portion of the scripture we just read, verse 1, the Lord chose Saul. In verse 6, the spirit of the Lord came upon him, and also in verse 6, he would prophesy. He would be turned into another man in verse 6. God would be with him in verse 7, and God gave him another heart in verse nine.

So we believe that there’s no doubt Saul was a believer in the Lord. It was not a heretic. He was not a heathen. He was a believer. Now first Samuel chapter 15, first Samuel chapter 15 just turned to your right. And notice a few things God had told Samuel some things to do. Samuel began to get the big head and did a lot of things that he should not have done. And one of the things that God told him to do is that I want you to kill the Amalekites, of Malachi is the type of the flesh.

They were people that had persecuted the children of Israel when they came up out of the land of Egypt. And God says that these are people that are a thorn in the side of the nation of Israel. And He says that I want you to kill them and kill them all. So God remembered what a gag had done. And this is a gag here. And He was to be killed. And God told them, says I want you to kill them all, but He didn’t do it.

He didn’t do what he was supposed to do. Now look there in verse 19. This is in first Samuel chapter 15. Says, wherefore then, this thou not obey the voice of the Lord? Samuel is talking to Saul. But this fly upon the spoil and this evil in the sight of the Lord. God says you did evil. What did he do? He obeyed in a lot of areas, but he didn’t obey in all areas. And remember, there’s people that say, well, either Christ is Lord of all or not Lord at all.

There is a point where you are supposed to yield yourself in every area of your life to the Lord. For salvation, it’s not Lord of all. It’s that you trust Christ as your Savior. Now after you are saved, I believe that Christ should be the Lord of every area of your life. Means you should be willing to obey the Lord in all things. But he says here, he says in verse 20, and Saul said unto Samuel, Yay, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord and have gone the way which the Lord sent me and have brought a guy the king of Malachite.

He says of Amalek and have utterly destroyed the Malachites. But he didn’t. He saved one man alive. He had confiscated the sheep and so forth that he was going to offer sacrifice. He says the people made me do it. And he had talked to Eve. He had made excuses on why things were not right. He determined what he would do and wouldn’t do. You see, the steps away from serving God is not all at one time. It’s a process.

It’s where you go through a systematic step and away from the direction that God wants you to go in. And so now it was partial obedience. At the beginning it was total obedience. Now it’s partial obedience. And he made the statement down here in verse 21, but the people took of the spoil, chief in the oxen, the chief of everything. Samuel made this statement there in verse 22, half the Lord is great, delight and burn offerings and sacrifices as an obey in the voice of the Lord.

Behold to obey is better than sacrifice and to harken than the fad of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. Witchcraft was a sin that God says was to be with execution. They were to stone and put out of their land those who were those are familiar spirits, those who had seances and the diviners and so forth, those that were guilty of enchantments and so on. God said, he did not want, he said, I’ve given you my word.

My word is what you’re supposed to go by, not trying to line up some planets and not by trying to conjure up the dead and trying to find up some secret stuff. God says, no. He says, because I have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected them from be in King. You’re not going to be King no more. And in the verse 24, he saw, says, I have sinned, I’ve transgressed the commandment of the Lord and thy word because I feared the people and obeyed their voices.

Now therefore I pray, pardon my sin, turn again with me and that I may worship the Lord. He said, I will not return with thee, for thou hast rejected the word of the Lord. In other words, did he confess his sin? Yes, he did. He said, I’m sorry, I should I was wrong. That did not restore the crown to him. See, the biggest thing that we have today is there’s people think that all you have to do is just confess your sin and you’re right with God.

No, you’re not. Don’t think that just because here you are as a child of God and you commit a sin, you have broke fellowship with God. Our walk with God is not based upon our total 100% obedience because if it did, nobody could have fellowship with God. with God. We have fellowship with God because the blood of Jesus Christ continually keeps us clean. Now your fellowship with God might be that you’re not as close to the Lord as you should be, but you can still have some fellowship with God.

Me and my wife can have fellowship with each other, but there may be times when it’s not as close as it ought to be. And just because I do something wrong, it didn’t break our fellowship like, now we don’t have none at all. No, you can still have some fellowship, but it’s not as strong as it ought to be. It’s not as joyful as it ought to be. It’s not as full as it ought to be. First John talks about that your joy may be full.

So I don’t believe that as you walk with the Lord and you do certain things and you’ve got a little sin in your life, that all of your fellowship when God is broken. I believe it’s strained. I believe it’s weakened. I believe the joy is diminished, but God said he wants us to have a full joy. And so therefore we confess our sins and God is faithful and just to forgive us for what we’ve done and the forgiving us of what we’ve done means that we can continue to walk with the Lord.

And if you don’t restore your walk, you don’t restore fellowship because fellowship is you and God in agreement and if you don’t restore the walk, you don’t restore a fellowship or the the walk that God. So this is what is happening now with Saul. He had rebelled against the Lord. He asked the Lord to forgive him to pardon, but too late. And I don’t know if he asked God as much as he asked Samuel because Samuel was a very, very powerful man.

Things were getting bad for him. He was on a downhill slide. Now look at chapter 18. chapter 18 and notice there in verse 29, 18 and verse 29. This is just to start to in verse 28. Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David and that Michael’s Saul’s daughter loved him. So Saul hated David. Why? Well because David was going be the next king. But there’s a lot of things that David didn’t totally understand and know at the time.

But he knew that there’s something different about David, God that was with him. David was young again. And also Saul had a daughter and his daughter loved David. And of course later on David is hated by Saul. And what does Saul want to do with David? He wants to kill him. So he begins to throw things at him, try to kill him. He even had his men out hunting for him and so forth. So we got pretty bad. But look what he says in verse 29.

Saul was a believer. Saul was yet the more afraid of David. And Saul became David’s enemy continually. Now there’s those who say that in the book of 1 John when he says that whosoever is born of God does not commit sin, that word commit they say is the word Greek. Greek word praso, which means to habitually practice. So you can get even in your scopher reference Bible and look in the margin and you’ll say practice sin. In the NIV we’ll talk about you won’t practice sin.

Well the problem is is every Christian practices sin or they’re just plumb experts at it. Because then you get into how many sins did it take to practice sin? Well see the Greek word there is not prasot. Prasot means to habitually commit sin, who continues sinning. But the word is poeo in the Greek and poeo means one single act of sin. So he says, whosoever is born of God to not commit sin cannot commit one single act of sin because his seed remaining and he cannot sin.

Not that he cannot practice sin. That contradicts the part that you said you will practice sin. And And so that’s why I despise I do not like the NIV. The NIV is not a good translation. Though there’s some people who look upon it as superior to a girl King James. But the King James I believe is correct. It simply says what it says. Then you can explain things to people. But when you put it into a translation and say this is what it says and it doesn’t say that.

I believe people answer to God for saying the Bible says and the Bible doesn’t say that. So does a Christian practice sin? Well it says that first John, when they use that word incorrectly, they’re saying if you’re really saved, you won’t go ahead and practice sin. You won’t continue on in sin. So then everybody becomes fruit inspectors. Then look at people’s lives and if you’ve got sin in your life, you must not really be saved because if you was really saved, you wouldn’t do that.

And if that’s the case, then everybody is lost because if you fall around everybody long enough you’ll find out that everybody got sent in their life and generally we’re guilty of committing the same sins over and over and over and over again. When you get mad about certain things being said to you in a certain way you’ll probably do that again the next time, the next time, the next time, the next time, the next time, the next time, the next time.

But that’s not what it says. And God does not tolerate these things but look what He says. David was Saul’s enemy. Saul became David’s enemy, continued. That word continually means that Saul, a believer, was continually, habitually committing sin and still a believer. And he was doing it against David. But when we talk about in the book of 1 John, that whosoever is born of God does not commit sin, that’s the new birth. The new birth born of God does not sin.

But in your flesh you will habitually commit sin. It would be great if you would stop all of it, and I would stop all of it, but we’re born with a sinful nature and we sin. But this is what was happening. Saul was getting worse and worse. He didn’t get better and better. He was right with the Lord, and then he started getting away from the Lord, and the older, he got the worse he got. And it’s the worst thing involved, just because you and I have known the Lord for a long time.

What does it mean that you can coast from here on in? You wore it before and you had the discipline and you fought battles. You fought a lot of battles over the temptations of the flesh and the pride of life and the lust of the eyes and so forth and you’re going to have to fight them until the day you die. This old flesh will not stop and don’t let down just because you’re getting older and think it doesn’t matter anymore.

It still matters. We’re not dead yet. We’re not home yet. to get close to the bank of the river where we can look across with a wish for life. Like the song of Jordan says. Now look in 1 Samuel 28, 1 Samuel 28, and look in verse 7. Three verses that I want us to look at here. And then said, Saul unto his servants, seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit. Was that right or was that wrong?

That was wrong. 424 law, Saul would die for this. And if there was a woman that was able to, that guilty of this as a wizard would be, a word called Necromancer, they were to be killed. God did not want it in the land. It was a sin unto death. I saw going to this woman, according to the law, the Word of God, saw which would die. He says, seek me a woman to have a familiar spirit. that I may go to her and inquire of her.

And his servant said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at indoor, and Saul disguised himself and put on other Raymond, and he went and took him in with him. And they came to the woman by night, and he said, I pray thee divine unto me, by the familiar spirit, and bring him up whom I shall name unto thee. And the woman said unto him, Behold, thou knoweth what Saul hath done, How he had cut off those that have familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land.

Wherefore, then layest thou a snare for my life to cause me to die. See at one time in Saul’s life, he killed people that the Bible says he was supposed to do. He believed the word of God. He fulfilled the word of God. He did the word of God. And then he began to compromise the word of God and lifted himself up as the judge over the word of God and became disobedient. And as he became disobedient, he became, you know, lots of days ago in his own life, and he would partially obey the Lord.

And then it got to where he didn’t want to obey the Lord at all. Now he was trying to kill David. Now he’s going to the witch of Endor. Look what he says in the verse 10. Saul swear to her because she says, I could die for this. Saul says, he swear to her by the Lord. He swear to her by the Lord. As the Lord liveth, there shall no punishment happen to be for this thing. But what was the will of God?

Now see now he is the judge of God and he is overriding God. God says, says, they all die. And Saul says, no you won’t. You see anything wrong with this picture? There’s a lot wrong with this. Because now a man has become the judge in his own eyes about what he thinks is right and wrong. See, this is what I was talking about this morning, the carnal Christian. When you become a carnal Christian, you do not see the way you ought to see.

You don’t understand. Then you set in judgment upon those that are godly, that our righteous and you become a nitpicking person, a back-biter, and then the blame, like he’s already blamed in chapter 15, it was somebody else’s fault. And here we go. So he says in verse 10, and Saul swear to her, by the Lord’s end, as the Lord liveth, there shall no punishment happen to the for this thing. Was that right? That was wrong. He showed a great disrespect for God and for God’s law.

Now look in 1 Samuel 31, 1 Samuel 31, and look there in verse 1. In verse 1, Now the Philistines fought against Israel and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines and fell down slain in Mount Gilmohah. And the Philistines followed hard unto Saul or upon Saul, and upon his sons, and the Philistine slew Jonathan, and a Benadab, and Mácajua, Saul’s sons. And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hid him, and he was sore wounded of the archers.

Then said Saul unto his armor-bearer, Draw thy sword, thrust me through their wiz, lest these uncircumcised come, and thrust me through and abuse me. But his armor-bearer would not for he was sore of frame. Therefore Saul took a sword and fell upon it. What did he just do? He committed suicide. Committed suicide. Now did Saul, toward the end of his life, all you’ll go astray in your backslide, but you’ll always come back before you die? No, he didn’t. because there is a sin on the death.

In other words, Saul died and even though it says that he fell upon his sword, did you know that the Bible says that God slew him? Did you know that the things that you can do in rebellion can be a fulfillment of God’s judgment upon you because of the seizures that you make? And God keeps his word. Remember he had just said, Samuel come up and Samuel, what’s going to happen to me tomorrow? He says, tomorrow you and your sons are going to be with me.

Saul was told in advance, tomorrow you’re going to die. I don’t know if Saul totally understood that, but the Scriptures said that. Now, look there in 1 Chronicles chapter 10. 1 Chronicles 10. 1 Chronicles 10, look there in verse 13. Verse 13. So Saul died After he came back to the Lord That what it said? for Saul died for his Transgression is there a sin on the death a sin that can produce death in other words There’s a point where God says that’s enough You’re dead man Even though he says I’ve sinned and pardon me it did not restore him time it did not restore the throne it did not restore his life so you’re gonna die you’re going to be with me tomorrow Samuel says so he says in verse 13 so Saul died for his transgression which he committed against the Lord but was there somebody

watching what he did remember what at what time of the day was it that he went to see the witch of Endor, what time of the day was it? At night time. God can’t see at night. See God can’t see at night. He’s blind. So that’s why most people sin at night more than they do in the daytime because nobody can see you at night. I wonder if God can see through the blackness. Think God can see it all the time, anywhere.

There isn’t any place that God cannot go or see. God sees all. Did God see and know everything that Saul was doing? And God brought about his death. Do you think it was the Lord that caused those archers to be able to hit his body? Allow it to happen? If God wanted to, he could have protected Saul. But God’s going to let him die. God let him die. So in verse 13, because he committed sin against the Lord, even against the Word of God.

He knew the Word. He knew what God told him to do and refused to fully obey the Lord. He was told about the Amalekites. He would not do it. He became judged. Do you think that our obedience, or partial obedience, or total rebellion, makes a matter with God. There’s a God up there. He’s still on the throne. He knows what’s going on and God doesn’t play games. We’re not doing whatever we want and he’s asleep someplace on the other side of some planet and he can’t see what’s going on here.

God is busy working in the affairs of every one of us. You and your life is important to God. Get up what else He says, he said, even against the word of the Lord, which he kept not. Do you think God wants us to keep His word? Think of why He died. It is important. And then He says, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit to inquire it, because God had a law. It’s a shame that Saul thought he could suspend that law, but God can’t just spend his law.

He fulfilled his law. And looking for a word to enquire that, not of the Lord. Therefore, and you ought to underline these three words. He slew him. God says he did it. God let it happen. God slew him. it was just an accident. You know, some guy got a lucky shot off, you know. No, it wasn’t. There’s a God in heaven that can guide that little old error right into that man. And then that man, not wanting to be captured by the uncircumcised Philistines, took his life and his armor bearer that was with him, he took his life too.

So he sees how it works. He said, and He turned the kingdom unto David, the Son of Jesse. Well, isn’t that a wonderful story of all the good things that God did for a man, only to take all those great opportunities and He blew it and turned against the very God that gave it to him. That was all grace. What had so done to earn this? Nothing. Now you have trusted Christ as your Savior and me. And now God has bestowed upon us all these wonderful opportunities that He gives us to have as we live our lives.

And we’re just like Saul. We will partially obey the Lord, but not fully, not totally. Not 100%. We’ll hold back. I wonder if God is doing the same thing in our life that He did in His life. You know, this little accident, that little accident, you know, because you can’t see God act. You know, nobody saw God shoot him with that arrow. Nobody saw God cause him to push him down on that sword. Nobody saw God make him think like that.

But God can do a lot of things behind the scenes. And God is taking credit for this. But Saul could say he committed suicide. I had people tell me, well, you know, if you commit suicide, you’re going to hell. Suicide is in? Yeah. Did Christ pay for all of sin? Yeah. Paid. Paid. Can you commit suicide until go to heaven? Of course. Of course. There’s people that’ll tell you, no, you can’t. Yes, you can. Am I recommending you commit suicide?

No. No. Don’t you go out of here and write on a little piece of paper. A Yankee told me to commit suicide and there’s my little note. Don’t you do that. I’ll hunt you. I don’t believe it’s right. I believe it’s dishonoring to God. I believe it’s a shame. I believe we should let God take us home and God is ready to take us home. And I don’t believe in the mercy killing. I don’t believe in euthanasia for old folks.

I don’t believe that I as an individual, I cannot. Impossible. And I have more compassion upon a person that’s suffering than what God can have. Don’t you think, if I hurt God hurts? If I have compassion, don’t you think God has more than I got? In whose hands is life and death supposed to be in? Then let God take them. God, you’re supposed to be a God of compassion. And if you can tolerate that person’s suffering, then go ahead.

You want to take them home, take them home. I find it a lot easier to do that than to become God. Deciding, OK, I’m going to take your life, and let you live. I don’t want nobody doing that to me. Just let God handle it. I think He can do a fairly good job. Let’s pray, Shoni. Our Father, once again, we thank You for the free gift of eternal life. We know that You love us. We know you paid for all of our sins.

We know you give us as a gift, eternal life, the very moment we trust you. And Father, because we know that we’re going to heaven, Father, we know that we also have a great responsibility. You have so blessed us, not because we deserve anything, but you’ve given us an opportunity just like you did this song. Great opportunity, great position as your child in this world to serve you, to do right. We pray that we’ll serve you fully with our whole heart, not partial, because it’s only a step toward disobedience and totality.

And Father, after a while we won’t even see and understand the things that we do. Because we’ll be doing it without it seems right in our own eyes. I pray Lord, You help us to do what’s right, to encourage one another as we should. I love each other. I’ll probably ask the blessings of one each person here tonight. Christ in the Pray. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida with Dr. Ralph Arnold.

We pray that you were blessed by today’s message. If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, you can reach Bibleline and pledge your support to keep us on the air in your area By dialing toll free 1-800-576-3771. That’s 1-800-576-3771. If you wish to hear today’s program again or would like to download a free MP3 of today’s or any previous Bibleline program, go to BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the spinning globe in the upper right corner of our homepage.

If you’re in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 1030 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcast of our services may be seen by going to our church website, calvaryoftampa.org. Thanks for joining us on Bible Live, and now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. We will be changed. Hot up to meet the Lord in the air.

So live today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon. Just keep looking up.