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We keep chasing what looks impressive—the success the world promises—forgetting it all carries an expiration date, like a freshly cut tree that soon dries out and becomes trash. Samuel falls into the same trap sizing up Jesse’s sons in 1 Samuel 16, until the Lord stops him cold.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
I really think you don’t want to miss that. Speaking of things we don’t want to miss, we don’t want to miss the reading of God’s Word and the exploration of it. So let’s now prepare our hearts to hear from God’s Word.
Some of you already know the story I’m about to share. And if you don’t, you should know it because it has to do with the experience of our church and our parking lot. We have an incredible blessing being here in this space. I’m struck oftentimes as I read updates from friends of mine who are planting churches in different places, and they talk about all the time they spend every week tearing down and then setting up again the following week, over and over and over again. If you’ve ever been involved in a church plant that has to do that, you know exactly what I’m referring to. It’s a lot of work.
And you think about everything that we’re doing. You take all that and you add on spending hours and hours setting up and tearing down everything before and after. And you think about that and you think, wow, God gave us a space, and it’s incredible. We, a lot of places around here, if we didn’t have this space, if we went and tried to rent just on Sundays a space, we would spend more than we spend a month to have this space. It’s such a blessing from God.
Now, having that blessing at such an affordable price has its little challenges. And one of them you may notice is that we do have dumpsters over in the parking lot. Not my favorite thing out there, but because sometimes stuff blows out of them and blows across the parking lot and we have to pick it up and so on. It’s the cost of having this space, but I’m thankful. And every once in a while, those dumpsters provide something a little bit more.
I was taking out the trash one Sunday this summer before church. We’d, I think, might have had a special event or something, and so there was extra trash in there, and I’m carrying it out. And our neighbor right next door was moving out, and they had been clearing out everything inside the store. And apparently, amongst other things, they decided wasn’t worth taking with them was their Christmas tree. And so I came to that dumpster, and there’s a box sitting in the dumpster for our Christmas tree. And I can see because it’s partway open, the Christmas tree is laying inside the box at the top of the dumpster. And if you know me, you know I have a soft spot for Christmas trees.
I look at this Christmas tree, and I wondered how many years someone had put it up and taken it down. Was it maybe from one of the owners of the shop’s house, and they had been taken to the shop, maybe replaced by a different tree, but then had been put up and taken down at the shop? And now it was in a dumpster. I looked at that little tree and I thought, this just can’t be. This can’t be. You can’t take a Christmas tree and just throw it in a dumpster. But was it missing parts? What was its state?
So I looked at that tree and I thought, okay. I grabbed some gloves and I pulled it out, pulled the box out, carried it in here, tucked it away. And right before I did, I thought, I’m gonna see, you know, before I commit to us having the space for this tree, I should at least see if everything’s there. And I saw it came in two segments. The two segments were there. And it had a plastic base, one of those ones that you often have with artificial trees with four plastic pieces that snap into the base of it. And there were only two of them. Tree couldn’t even stand up.
I’d imagine what happened is as it was tossed in the dumpster, two of the other pieces fell under something. I was dedicated to rescuing the tree. I wasn’t quite that dedicated, but I thought, okay, this is something I can solve. In fact, I’ve done it before. One tree that’s been faithfully over here for each of our Christmases, it didn’t have a base at all. And I found a base for a live Christmas tree and just my mom came up with the idea to wrap some of our extra air filter media around it, and it stays up. So it’s been up, not falling on Carolyn or Chris or Melanie or Ellie right now. So it seems to be working. We can come up with something for this.
And well, I’m talking about this tree, but it’s this tree right here. Right here, you can see it. We’re in the midst of our little forest, and it’s been there looking beautiful and Christmassy the last couple of weeks. And I’m struck by that. Here’s a tree. The tree was viewed as garbage. It’s not maybe the fanciest tree, and it certainly wasn’t gonna be fancy if it was gonna be crushed by a dump truck or a garbage truck and thrown in a landfill. No one would have wanted it. And I’d imagine maybe as they were getting ready to throw it out, that’s even what the store owner thought. Eh, you know, it’s just a little tree. I’ll find a new tree if I ever need one. Who needs this tree?
Well, apparently I did or we did, we as a church did. And the reason was I looked at it and thought this tree can be a story for us. This tree can be with us and remind us of what God does for us. And here’s how. Because if you really think about it, we’re far worse than a tree in relatively good shape in a dumpster. We are those who, in comparison to God, are the tree that’s already been thrown in the dumpster with a bunch of old rotten food poured on top of it, crushed by the compactor and the garbage truck and then thrown in the landfill. That’s our state before God.
And if we’re not visibly that way, that’s where we should be headed. We look at a tree in the store and it looks beautiful. You go to a tree lot where there’s a tree that’s been chopped down, but it’s freshly cut, and it looks beautiful. But what do you know as you look at that beautiful but cut off tree? You know in a few weeks it’s going to be dried and viewed as garbage. Sometimes we look in the moment successful. We look like we’re promising. We look full of life, but we know that we are those with like those trees’ expiration dates. There’s something coming. Someday we’ll be, in a manner of speaking, tossed aside.
So when you think about how we judge people, the things that we often measure them by and their value, think about that. It’s sort of like tossing away this tree that would be able to go from any Christmas and saying, but I don’t want to get in the tree lot. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine for a time, but then it won’t be of any use as a Christmas tree any longer. And that’s the problem that Israel encountered.
As we started last week, you might say, well, what’s this have to do with Christmas and the promise of Christmas? Well, last week we looked at the promise that God gave when Adam and Eve fell into sin. And as they fell into sin, God immediately said he was going to do something, that the serpent had brought sin into the world. He tempted Eve. Eve had eaten of the fruit, Adam ate of the fruit. The sin had started to destroy the beauty of creation because they looked at this thing that looked promising rather than the thing that was promising. God said he was going to fix it.
Well, that problem just keeps perpetuating itself. And Israel, even as God had called them out of Egypt, even as he’d called them into a land that was good and plentiful, even as he had been with them time and again and rescued them, they said, that’s not enough. We want a king. And God, of course, is their king. God is our king, but we want a king like everyone else, a king that looks promising. It doesn’t matter if really he’s rotten to the core. It doesn’t matter if he’s going to not be like this evergreen here that genuinely is evergreen. It doesn’t matter if he’s at the tree lot with the roots cut off and he’s going to be dry and brittle and ultimately bring death and destruction as he ignites and flames and brings us down with him. It doesn’t matter. We want a king like everyone else because it looks impressive in the moment.
God called them to something different. God calls us to something different, and yet we do the same thing over and over again. You might say, well, I’ve never asked that we have a king. But we find ways. We do the same thing. We say, I see what the world says is success. I see what TikTok says is success. I see what Instagram says is success. I see what the magazines at the grocery store say is success, and I want that, and that’s what’s going to make things good. We rejoice in what we can achieve and how we can align ourselves with worldly success, and yet it all has an expiration date. It all has an expiration date. It’s all going to be rotten.
And as we turn to God’s Word tonight, we’re going to 1 Samuel 16. Let’s pray that God would help us to see what will not expire and will instead bring life to us. Will you pray with me, please?
Lord, we come before you as those who chase after different forms of success or what we think is success. We don’t realize how it’s fading away from our grasp. We don’t realize how we are those in the dumpster, helpless to actually bring success. We desperately need your rescue, but we pray that you would help us to understand that and then respond as those who have been rescued and are ready to call others to the rescue that only you can provide. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
So, my little tree there, it couldn’t get out of the dumpster. And as Israel sought a king that was going to somehow make things right because they felt like they were in the dumps, so to speak, they kept trying for the worldly things, but it would be like a discarded Christmas tree in a dumpster trying to pull itself out. Well, you say, that’s silly. Christmas trees are supposed to be in the dumpster. Well, you say, that’s silly. Christmas trees, they’re not, they don’t move. They can’t pull themselves out. And exactly right, we can’t really pull ourselves out either, but we try.
Take a look at 1 Samuel 16, verse six. Samuel has been sent to anoint the next king of Israel. And it says, when they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, surely the Lord’s anointed is before him. But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.
Here’s a bit of an irony if you understand where this is in the story. And we’ve been going on Tuesday nights through the Bible and we happen to be in 1 Samuel, so if you think back a few weeks, we’ve actually been in this story if you’re in that Bible study. Or if you just read through the book of 1 Samuel, here’s what you know. There’s been a king selected a few chapters before, Saul.
Saul is a king that the Lord gives to the people of Israel because they want a king that looks like every other nation. He’s the king that shows up in the influencers’ TikTok. Here’s what a good king, here’s what a king looks like. And then the music plays, right? Licensed, of course, properly, whatever pop song’s playing. Yes, here is a king. And he looked like a king. And sometimes he even acted like a king. But he wasn’t a king after God’s own heart.
He was a king that wanted to do what would make him look good. And the Israelites wanted a king that would make them look good. Saul was shoulders above everyone else in the gathering when he was elected. And so people look and say, wow, look at that king. Here’s the king that we need. He will bring us success.
And God allows them to have such a king so that they can see what that means. It means trouble. Because as much as Saul at times seemed to be doing what the Lord wanted him to do, Saul at times seemed to be doing what the Lord wanted him to do, Saul kept depending upon himself. Saul gets full of himself. Here’s a man who isn’t very confident at first, but he becomes full of himself. People are saying, oh, look at you, Saul. You look like a king. You’re impressive. Hail the king.
And so Saul starts to ignore what God calls him to do. And Samuel knows all this. In fact, Samuel’s the one that goes to Saul and tells him that God is going to take away the kingdom from him because he hasn’t been faithful. And you know what happens here? Samuel goes to find the next king, and it’s like he goes into the grocery store, and nothing’s been going well in his life. He bought the magazine last year that said 100 ways to improve your life in the new year. He tried them. He gave up on them by February. Didn’t do any good. But he says, I don’t know how to make my life work. I’ll just buy, oh, wait. Here’s a magazine that says 25 ways in 25. Look at that one. Maybe that’ll work.
So he tries to do it again. He says, Ah, the Lord led me to this family, said one of the sons of this man, Jesse, is going to be king, and now I’m meeting Eliab. And Eliab looks so handsome. He looks impressive. He looks just like the kings that I saw in the Jerusalem times were meeting over in the neighboring countries. He’s the man for us. And the Lord says, no. You’re looking at outward appearance.
You’ve gone to the store, and you’re looking at all the new trees with the flocking on them, the fancy lights. They’re all LED, incidentally, so they’re green and energy efficient. I look at the heart. He’s gonna burn out. He’s not the one. And so it is, they go through son after son after son of Jesse, looking for the one.
Now, we’re told in 1 Samuel that there were seven sons they went through before they arrived at the one that God is actually going to call David. We have a little advantage. We hear about David all the time, so we kind of know, well, David, of course, he’s the one, but Samuel doesn’t know this. They go through seven sons.
But when we get to 1 Chronicles, what do we find? As it retells the story, it only mentions six other brothers. Why is that? Well, one bit of speculation on that that I think is really kind of insightful are there are lots of reasons why we don’t understand how God is working, how God is using us. One of them is we don’t even know how long we’re going to live.
And so, quite likely, the reason that there are only six sons left in Chronicles is one of the sons died before he had any kids. He doesn’t have a family tree to list. He’s not the king. He’s just omitted. And so, there are different reasons why God might not choose someone as he’s looking at all the things we look at. Maybe we imagine one of David’s brothers, he was incredibly handsome and powerful and eloquent. But his life was not going to be long enough to lead the people.
Another one of David’s brothers, maybe if he’d been given power, would have been too selfish. Another one of his brothers would have been too meek and not willing to actually do what a king needs to do to make sure that things happened as they needed to. God was going to make an incredible promise that continues to impact us today, and he was going to pick the one who could carry that.
But clearly, as Jesse is meeting with Samuel, and he knows that Samuel wants to meet this special chosen son of his, that Samuel is here to do something, Jesse doesn’t mind what would be a value in his sons. And notably, he doesn’t even think it’s worth calling David in from his work. David’s out in the field shepherding, and Jesse thinks, oh, if Samuel’s looking for an impressive son of mine, I don’t even need to bother with David.
There’s someone else. No reason to waste the time. I need my sheep tended to. I mess everything up to bring him in, and I already know the conclusion. I know that Samuel’s not going to pick the little tree from the dumpster. He’s going to get the beautiful nine-foot tall flock tree with the fiber optics that changes colors, of course.
That’s not how God works. I was reading a story a while back from, I mentioned this column before that I’ll read sometimes, a man who goes into automotive junkyards, and he talks about the cars he runs into and what he sees. Well, this one was different than many of the cars because they’re supposed to be junkyard gems, but most of them, you know, they’ve already had parts taken off of them. They’re beat up. There’s a reason why they’re in the junkyard. They’ve been totaled because the front end was smashed up, but the back still has usable parts, or whatever the case.
But in this particular case, he ran into what we might call a hot hatch. There was a little hatchback, stick shift, in the junkyard. Anyone want a nice little hatchback you could race around in? Stick shift? Anyone? Oh, we have one. Take her.
Why was it in the junkyard? Well, I left out one little detail about this hot hatch. It’s a 1987 Mazda 323. And so, it’s not really all that hot. It doesn’t go very fast. But it was a little Mazda hatchback, one of the cheapest cars available in 1987. It’d be about $21,000 new in today’s dollars. So, if you’ve shopped for a car in recent years, you know that’s actually, doesn’t sound very good, but it’s pretty good, actually, for a brand new car. Around $7,000 in 1987.
And something was notable about this car. It was in perfect shape. The upholstery inside, the only thing wrong with it was that the mechanic that drove it into the lot probably had grease on him and got some grease on the driver’s seat. Otherwise, it was supposed to be immaculate inside. Everything had been cleaned and taken care of.
The person who encountered it decided to look it up online just to try to learn more about why this car was in there and found that every year it had gone for inspection, exactly in the same month. Whoever owned it had taken precise care of it. And they kept a note of the maintenance under the fuel cap written in a shaky hand, clearly someone who was older had last written on it. So, someone who may be genuinely taking it only to church, right? So, the car only had 70,000 miles on it.
So, we don’t know the exact story, but you can kind of probably put it together. This person presumably passed and the kids inherited this car. And they look at this little hatchback, runs great, been maintained. All the records were in the glove compartment. This was a well-taken-care-of car with only 70,000 miles, but it was a 1987 Mazda 323 with a stick shift.
And so, what did they do even though it ran great? It was taken immaculate care of. They looked at it and said, this is a piece of junk. I don’t wanna drive this. It went in the junkyard. And I imagine, quite likely, those people that put that in that junkyard have a car that will not last as long as that car would’ve lasted. Maybe broke down even in the time since it went into the junkyard. But it wasn’t impressive.
And so often when we measure success, we’re looking at what looks impressive. Ah, here’s a car with a beautiful two-tone paint job or these incredible headlights or this giant engine. And here is a little car of no particular impressive nature in itself, but been immaculately cared for and loved by the owner. And could’ve taken someone reliably places for years to come.
And how often is we’re thinking, how often even in the church, it’s ironic we talk about things like this, but how often in the church are we thinking, well, who could lead this ministry or who could take this on? And we think, well, who looks the most impressive? Who is the loudest voice? And what we’re not thinking of is the person who just chips away day by day serving God because that’s not how we function.
That’s not how you function, however, is not how I function. Jesse says to Samuel, you know, yeah, there’s that little old hatchback out in the fields, but I have these sports cars up here. Here, look at my garage. So much better than anything you’re gonna find out there. And God says, no, I want the little car that’s going to run. It’s not perfect.
David is definitely not a perfect king. David is not a perfect human being. He is a fallen human being like us, but here is the thing. God knew what his engine could do and God was going to use him. So sometimes we’re just looking at what something looks like. What is it impressive or not? Is it going to impress others or not? And that’s how we decide. Sometimes it’s what we feel like.
Take a look back just a chapter. Samuel encounters Saul. Samuel, it says, rose early to meet Saul in the morning and it was told Samuel, Saul came to Carmel and behold, he set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal. And Samuel came to Saul and Saul said to him, blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord.
Now, Saul hadn’t. God said not to take any loot. Saul took loot. Samuel was supposed to be traveling with him. Saul went on and set a monument to himself of all things. Saul was not doing what God had called him to do, but in the moment, he felt like he was achieving all kinds of stuff and so much so he just keeps on going.
Because what was it about? It was about how he felt. It started with how he looked. People are looking at him. He looks like a king who’s impressive. And then it went on to how he felt. I’m impressive. I can do this. I don’t really need Samuel. I’ll just wait and when Samuel shows up, I’ll just tell him that all the great stuff I’ve been doing and how I’m doing it for the Lord because what he confused was what makes him feel good with what pleases God. And they’re not the same thing.
Saul thought he was being impressive because in the moment, people were hailing him. Look at this brilliant king. He’s doing all this military stuff just brilliantly. We thought, we weren’t sure at first. You know, he seemed a little shy, but look at him taking on this and rising to the occasion. Here is our king.
What God wanted was not for Saul to say, I’m feeling good. I’m gonna go do some stuff. God wanted someone who would say, I know God is powerful. I’m going to do the things he calls me to. Those are very, very different things.
Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t feel excited when we’re doing what God’s called us to do. There shouldn’t be times that, I should say there should be times. There should be times where we do what God’s called us to do and we just feel so excited because we can tell the Holy Spirit’s with us and calling us to do it, but our emotions are deceptive. We need to keep coming back to his Word and saying, am I actually in line with it? As God calls us to make way for him, are we actually following the path that he is on or are we just going however our emotions feel? Because they might start on the right path. They start veering all over the place. And that’s what’s happening with Saul here.
People of Israel think, oh yeah, we’re so glad we got rid of that unimpressive situation where we just had God leading us. Now we have someone who right here on earth, we can see him and he’s cheering us in the battle and now the Philistines and our other enemies, they’re going to fear us because we have Saul.
You ever do a DIY project and you do it because it just feels good to do it yourself? And sometimes, I’ve heard people do this. Surely I’ve never done this, right? I’ve heard sometimes you actually spend so much more time and ultimately money getting everything because you have to keep redoing stuff and so on. It might actually cost more than having someone do it. Have you ever, I mean, not that I can speak from experience at all ever on this.
No, I mean, sometimes we’re trying to be economical but sometimes it’s just, I am going to get this and it doesn’t matter if it’s harder. It doesn’t matter if it’d be easier to replace it. I’m going to repair it. I’m going to keep fighting with this. I’m going to succeed. Why? Because then I can say I did it and I have the satisfaction of that.
Saul has that kind of satisfaction. He says, I am a DIY king here. I am going to fix this kingdom and then I can go and say, God, look, I have fixed this kingdom for you.
What did God want? He wanted Saul to understand that he wasn’t the savior. What did he want from Saul? He wanted Saul to say, God, I can’t fix it. I need you to come in. I need the only one who can actually retool things and fix it. But he wouldn’t do it. He wanted that satisfaction.
And so this is actually the second time Samuel confronts him and brings judgment upon him for this. Saul won’t get it into his head because he’s so busy following what he feels, following what he wants to do that he’s clueless to the fact that he’s completely off course.
We can’t really do it ourselves. And yet we keep thinking we can. We keep chasing after that emotional high of, I’ve done this. But just as Adam and Eve couldn’t fix the situation that we encountered last week, they needed a serpent crusher to come in. And Saul did too.
And if we really want to understand the difference between Saul and David, this is at the heart of it. Take a look at the next section, 1 Samuel 16, verse 11. Then Samuel said to Jesse, are all your sons here? And he said, there remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep.
Samuel said to Jesse, send and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes here. And he sent him and brought him in, and now he was ready and had beautiful eyes and was handsome. And the Lord said, arise, anoint him, for this is he. Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
David didn’t even seem of consequence. He’s in the junkyard. We don’t need him. He’s in the dumpster. We don’t need him to be here. But God had chosen David because God wasn’t looking. Yes, incidentally, some people tried to make too much of the words here, but it seems that David actually wasn’t an ugly man, but he wasn’t as impressive as his brothers.
And God said, the thing that you find impressive isn’t what I find impressive. It’s telling in the very names that Jesse’s sons have. You know, was this in spite of Jesse? Did he have a moment of clarity? I don’t know. But it’s thought that David’s name means beloved of the Lord. The other sons were, my father is great, or the avenger of the Lord, or different things, nice. But David’s name pointed to the heart because David was not a king who was going to avenge for God. God was going to use him to bring his justice.
David wasn’t someone who was going to fix everything for God. God was going to love David and use him to bring his love to the world. And so what do we see? Samuel anoints the beloved of the Lord, and the Spirit comes upon him, and David’s going to be sent.
1 Samuel 13, verse 14. Samuel brings judgment to Saul. But now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be prince over his people because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.
The difference between Saul and David. We might wonder, David messes up a lot. David murders, David is unfaithful. David isn’t a good man a lot of the time. So why does he get a promise that his line will lead to the Messiah? Why when we celebrate Christmas, can we point back to David as part of the story because God’s going to work through his family tree, but Saul gets cut off, why?
They both messed up, but David kept coming back to the Lord. David in his worst moment still could see, I need God. And for each of us, that’s the challenge. Do we understand that we can’t do it? And that’s what Christmas is all about.
As we go into DIY Christmas, and I’m going to make it so everyone understands how merry I am, and I’m going to make everything great. Do we understand we can’t actually bring true joy to anyone? Saul thought he could. He was rejoicing himself. Everyone seemed to be rejoicing in him, but ultimately it wasn’t going to work. But David would be a part of what really brought joy because as he sought the Lord, the Lord used him, he used his family. And one day Jesus would be born in the line of David.
And indeed, the promise to David would continue through all eternity because there would be a king always on the throne, the king, Jesus himself, both God and man. As he is both God and man, David’s line would continue and does continue and will continue.
Paul makes the point explicit in Acts 13, referencing this very problem as he’s preaching and pointing to how David was rejected, but the Lord understood what was happening and calling the people to understand the same. It’s not about how impressive you are. It’s not about if you’ve memorized scripture perfectly. It’s not about any outside work you can do so people can tell you what an amazing Christian you are, what a faithful person you are, what a good person you are. Are you seeking after the Lord or not?
And as we come to Christmas, that’s the thing that really matters. It’s not anything else. Nothing else will matter if we’re not seeking after the Lord. But if we do, what does he do? Jeremiah 31:33, For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people.
Through the line of David that Jesus came into the world, the one who is a man after God’s own heart, through his family, God brought the one who writes on our heart the promise of God. Saul couldn’t do that on his own. Neither could David. The key difference is David was seeking after God rather than after his own glory. Seeking after the true joy we find in God instead of the false joy we find in a moment. It might feel like joy in the moment because he was depending on himself.
This little tree here, it couldn’t stand on its own. It certainly wasn’t going to fix its situation, but you know, the thing with this tree is that someone could come along and I could give it a base. But it still might not be all that impressive, right? I thought, well, it’s still not going to have lights. It certainly couldn’t light itself up and I expected it wouldn’t light up at all.
And yet I thought, well, this tree has had so much potential. Let’s plug it in and see what happens. And you know what? The tree lights. That tree had potential that could be used if the right person came along that said, it shouldn’t be in a dumpster. I’m not anything special, incidentally. This is just a Christmas tree, but I could come along because I feel sorry for Christmas trees.
Bring it in here, give it a base, plug it in, and guess what? There was something in it that was ready to be used. And David, there was something in him. He was made in the image of God. He was given gifts by God. He was given gifts by God himself. And each and every one of us has.
Now, you can’t just go along to another person, someone who feels sorry for you, like I feel sorry for a tree, and that person plugs you in. It’s not going to work that way. That’s what we try to do. That’s basically what Israel was trying to do with Saul, but if we come to the only one who’s the master electrician, the master restorer, the one who has the base to keep us from wobbling, guess what? He also offers us power through the Holy Spirit.
And he takes us in our brokenness. It doesn’t matter if some of our bulbs are broken and crushed. It doesn’t matter if it looks like we’re just to be discarded. He takes us and he brushes off the dirt and the soil, and he brings us over to the only true life source, the only true source of power, his very spirit, and he dwells in us and gives us the strength to go and light up and take that light into the world. Not our light, not light for our own glory, like Saul was seeking, but his light.
So what am I going to do? Am I going to live like Israel? Seek after what looks impressive that’s seemingly going to solve things? Are you going to? Are we going to be like Saul and just chase after what makes us feel good in the moment and think somehow that’s going to be fulfilling? Are we going to say, I’m in the dumpster, I have no power, I need someone to haul me out, I need someone to brush me off, I need someone to put me in a stable place, I need to be plugged in, and I know there’s only one who can do that.
And here’s the good news, friend. If you seek him, and if we continue to seek him when we kind of start pulling away and our cord starts to come out and our lights are dimming, guess what? He just plugs us right back in, and he keeps walking with us, and he keeps restoring us. And if we are coming to him this Christmas, we might still be tired, we might still be exhausted, we might still get frazzled and stressed out, but we’re rejoicing what matters.
And even in our tiredness, even when we’re maybe leaning a little bit and need to be straightened out and our branches fluffed, here’s the beautiful thing, God will keep working in us and people will see the difference. How many times over the millennia have people seen David as he testified to God’s goodness in the Psalms? And they’ve seen that man after God’s own heart. And through that, the Spirit has plugged in more and more people into the only source of life.
That’s when we can really rejoice. May we be a people who does that today and every day. Would you pray with me, please?
Father, would you help us to be a people who rejoice in you? We need your help, we need your strength. Would you plug us in when we’re unplugged? Would you pull us out of the dumpster when we’re discarded by the world that says we are of little value? When we’re broken, would you fix us? Because Lord, all those things are true of us. We need you.
We ask that you would give us strength to do what you’ve called us to do. Direction to be whom you’ve called us to be. And when we stray and we wander because we chase after our feelings, we chase after appearances, Lord, would you return us to where we ought to be? And would you use us to be those who then take that light, not light that we can generate on our own, but the light that we’re given through your Spirit? Would you help us to show that true joy in this world, this very season, and every time to come?
We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Thanks, Chris. You’re welcome.
We have gluten-free communion in the center ring and then the outside is gluten-based.
Sort of like if I’d taken that tree and pulled it out of the dumpster and said, huh, it doesn’t turn on out in the parking lot. Just set it up. It doesn’t even stand up. I threw it back in the dumpster, right? Doesn’t do any good.
That’s sort of what happens when we come to communion and we don’t know the Lord. We say, I wonder why things don’t seem to be happening for me. I take communion, but God doesn’t want us to be a people that simply do the right external things. Remember, he’s about the heart. And so what does he say? You need to turn to me.
Because this communion by itself, this is just a bit of grape juice and a little bitty wafer. But as we come to him and the Spirit is dwelling in us, what does he do? He takes this little bit of juice and this little piece of bread and he uses it to communicate something so much greater to us, to remind us of the love that he has for us, to strengthen us for what he calls us to.
And so something very, very, very different than what we do when we just come to it as a ritual. And so if you don’t know Jesus, you need to plug in first. And so we say, please don’t take these elements yet. Not because we don’t want to share them with you, but because we want you to know how to plug in. And we’d love to pray with you. All you need to do is pray to the Lord tonight and ask for his forgiveness. And he will be with you. He will forgive you.
On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took the bread. As he ate that meal with his disciples, he took the bread and he broke it and he gave it to them saying, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In like manner, after supper, he took the cup and he said, this cup is the new covenant and my blood poured out for you under the remission of sins. Do this as often as you drink of it.
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