To Encourage You

1 Samuel 12:18-19 “So Samuel called upon the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day, and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel. And all the people said to Samuel, ‘Pray for your servants to the Lord your God, that we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for ourselves a king.’”

Have you ever been so caught up in something that you suddenly regretted when you found out how wrong you’d been?  Perhaps you’d been warned, multiple times, but your ears were closed because you were so sure that what you were doing was right.  And then it dawns on you. What in the world do you do now?  What hope is there when we’ve made such a mess of things?  Is there any hope? 

It’s just that scenario that we see play out in the passage above from 1 Samuel 12.  As was their history, Israel had turned away from God’s will for them and chosen a better way, or so they thought.  They had rejected Samuel, God’s chosen judge, and the Lord Who had ordained him, and had chosen a king for themselves, against God’s will.  Samuel had warned them this repeatedly (1 Samuel 8:10-18; 1 Samuel 10:17-19).  Yet they continued on their ways. Apparently, they were deaf to what Samuel was saying. They wanted what they wanted, and they wanted it now!  And it all seemed so right.  It’s what everyone else in the world was doing, so how could it be wrong?!  They were even rejoicing with their new king and the victory over their enemies that they had gained by him (1 Samuel 11:15).  But then, in 1 Samuel 12, Samuel repeats himself once more. First, he reminds them, “as the Lord is witness (vs 5)” he, Samuel, had never wronged them in any way. He reminds them of their history of being delivered by God from their enemies, first by way of Moses and Aaron, then by various judges, the last of whom was Samuel, himself.  Yet, time after time they turned away from God in response to His goodness to them (vs 6 – 11).  And now they had turned from God, once again, to ask for a human king.  It was then that Samuel calls for God to send thunder and rain during the wheat harvest (when it usually didn’t rain) as a supernatural sign of God’s anger against their sin.  It was only when God answered this prayer that the seriousness of what they had done hit them.  It was then that they finally confessed their sin and asked Samuel to pray to God for them that they would not die..  And what was Samuel’s response? What was it that Samuel instructed them to do when the seriousness of their sin finally dawned on them?  And likewise, what should we do if the seriousness of some sin we’ve committed against God finally dawns on us?  Well, Samuel’s answer to Israel is the same as God’s answer to us.  It’s expressed in the following words: “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty.”

You see, to confess our sin means “to say the same thing” as God says about it.  It is evil, and it is wrong.  Yet, wonder of wonders, God’s guidance to us is always the same.  In essence, it’s “Don’t turn away from Me to something else. Turn towards Me and serve Me with all your heart.”

The mercy and forgiveness of God is such an amazing thing.  This God Whom we so often wrong stands ready to forgive if we but turn to Him, confess our sin, and turn around.  As we are told in these wonderful words from 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And how often does He forgive?  It’s as Jesus told Peter when he asked Him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” And then this reply: “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:21-22).  This wonderful God is One Whose “mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22-23).  And is this mercy showered upon us because we are good?  Hardly! It’s all because He is good. It’s all because He has set His love upon us in spite of who we are, not because of who we are.  It was “while we were still sinners, (that) Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).  What gratitude this truth should fill our hearts with. What renewed desire to turn to Him with a passion to obey.  For surely, where else can we go?