The Last Words of a Great Man

The Lord’s Day Evening

September 27, 2009

1 Samuel 12: 1-25

“The Last Words of a Great Man”

Dr. Derek W. H. Thomas

Now turn with me to 1 Samuel chapter 12, 1 Samuel chapter 12. This is Samuel’s swansong. This is his final speech. Actually it’s a sermon that he gives to the people of Israel. He’s going to appear a couple of times, but from now on, more or less, he retreats into the background. You’ll see in verse 17 that there is a reference to something called the “wheat harvest,” or perhaps you know it better as the Feast of Weeks. That’s a celebration referred to in Deuteronomy 16 in which the people of God would remember the exodus, they would recount their sins and failures, they would look to the Lord for mercy and vow obedience. And that’s basically Samuel’s sermon. The shape of the sermon is dictated by the festival at which this actually takes place – the Feast of Weeks.

Now before we look at the passage and read it together, let’s ask for God’s blessing.

Lord, we need Your help at every point in our lives. We need to hear the sweet notes of the Gospel at every point in our lives. We need, O Lord, to be reminded of how great Thou art and how much we are indebted to You, a debt that can never ever be repaid. Tonight, as we explore together these words of Samuel spoken three thousand years ago, yet by Your Spirit, they are words that are able to make us wise unto salvation, because every word is Your word. So grant Your blessing. Come, Holy Spirit, help us to read it and mark it and learn it and do it, and all for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

1 Samuel chapter 12:

“And Samuel said to all Israel, ‘Behold, I have obeyed your voice in all that you have said to me and have made a king over you. And now, behold, the king walks before you, and I am old and gray; and behold, my sons are with you. I have walked before you from my youth until this day. Here I am; testify against me before the Lord and before His anointed. Whose ox have I taken? Or whose donkey have I taken? Or whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed? Or from whose hand have I taken a bribe to blind my eyes with it? Testify against me and I will restore it to you.’ They said, ‘You have not defrauded us or oppressed us or taken anything from any man’s hand.’ And he said to them, ‘The Lord is witness against you, and His anointed is witness this day, that you have not found anything in my hand.’ And they said, ‘He is witness.’

And Samuel said to the people, ‘The Lord is witness, who appointed Moses and Aaron and brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt. Now therefore stand still that I may plead with you before the Lord concerning all the righteous deeds of the Lord that he performed for you and for your fathers. When Jacob went into Egypt, and the Egyptians oppressed them, then your fathers cried out to the Lord and the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, who brought your fathers out of Egypt and made them dwell in this place. But they forgot the Lord their God. And He sold them into the hand of Sisera, commander of the army of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand of the king of Moab. And they fought against them. And they cried out to the Lord and said, ‘We have sinned, because we have forsaken the Lord and have served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. But now deliver us out of the hand of our enemies, that we may serve you.’ And the Lord sent Jerubbaal and Barak and Jephthah and Samuel [Oh, one delightful commentator of the Old Testament whom I love dearly says, “Forgive the fault of an old man for putting his own name here along with the others.”] The Lord sent Jerubbaal and Barak and Jephthah and Samuel and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and you lived in safety. And when you saw that Nahash the king of the Ammonites came against you, you said to me, ‘No, but a king shall reign over us,’ when the Lord your God was your king. And now behold the king whom you have chosen, for whom you have asked; behold, the Lord has set a king over you. If you will fear the Lord and serve Him and obey His voice and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, it will be well. But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you and your king. Now therefore stand still and see this great thing that the Lord will do before your eyes. Is it not wheat harvest today? [That’s early summer and there is no rain.] I will call upon the Lord, that He may send thunder and rain. And you shall know and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in the sight of the Lord, in asking for yourselves a king.’ 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.’ And Samuel said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord will all your heart. And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty. For the Lord will not forsake His people, for His great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for Himself. Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you, and I will instruct you in the good and the right way. Only fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart. For consider what great things He has done for you. But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king.”

Amen. May the Lord add His blessing to that reading of His holy, inerrant Word.

There’s something of a courtroom drama in the opening of this chapter in verse 3. Samuel comes before the people and says, “Here I am. Testify against me!” - if he had defrauded anyone, if he had embezzled anyone, if he had taken a bribe and looked in another direction when he saw some wickedness. He puts himself before the people as an open book to be read of all men. Could you do that? That’s a risky thing to do, isn’t it? “Look on my life,” Samuel says. “Can anyone point a finger in my direction and say, ‘There! You rebelled, you sinned, you violated a commandment of God.’” That’s the first thing I want us to see tonight – the integrity of Samuel’s personal life.

I. The integrity of his personal life.

As a prophet, as one who had been called of God to be a prophet to the people, and the people say, “We can’t find anything. We can’t find a single instance to point the finger at you.” The world can see through hypocrisy. There was a minister that used to call at our house when I was a teenager. I think I might have told you this before. He only came because my father would give him chickens to send him away again, and I concluded that was what Christianity was about really, it was hypocrisy. Ligon was mentioning this morning computers, so let me do the same. WYSIWYG. You all know what WYSIWYG is in computer speak – it’s “What You See is What You Get.” If you’ve got something on a screen and you want it to print exactly as it is on the screen, you don’t want it to mess with anything, you don’t want it coming out in a different form or fashion, what you see is what you get – WYSIWYG. There’s a button on your, you’ve probably never used it, it’s a button – “Print Screen” it says. It’s a WYSIWYG button. You know Christians, Christians should be like that – what you see is what you get.

I love Calvin. This is Calvin’s 500^th anniversary. I’ve been reading Calvin till it’s coming out of my ears this year and speaking about him and I couldn’t tire of doing so. But I love one of his expressions that he used again and again in his sermons. He would say it in French of course, but translated into English it would be, “There are no back doors. There’s no back door to the store. There’s no back door to the shop. What you see is what it is.” Samuel, what you saw was what he was. He wasn’t one thing before the people and another thing somewhere else. Robert Redford, ladies you all know Robert Redford, he was seen in a hotel lobby one time and a lady made a bee-line towards him and he made his way towards the escalator and she said to him, “Are you the real Robert Redford?” And as the doors were closing he said, “Only when I am alone.” That’s a very telling answer, isn’t it? “Only when I am alone” because there was a public face, there was a Hollywood face, there was a face that he had to put forth before the paparazzi. Only when he was alone was he the real Robert Redford.

Well, Samuel, Samuel puts his life on the line and the people approve him. They weren’t bound to do that. Samuel’s message had been denied. Samuel’s ministry had been negated by the people again and again. He wasn’t a popular preacher. They didn’t like much of what he said, but they couldn’t point a finger at his godliness. Isn’t that remarkable? I read that passage again and again this week in preparation for tonight and it’s very convicting. Would you have the temerity, would you have the audacity, to stand up in public and say, “Which of you can point a finger at me?” He’s a godly man. The integrity of Samuel’s personal life.

II. The consistency of Samuel’s public witness.

The second thing I want us to see is the consistency of Samuel’s public witness. You see that in verse 7. “Stand still, that I may plead with you before the Lord concerning all the righteous deeds of the Lord that He performed for you and for your fathers.” What is he doing? Well, what Samuel is doing throughout the middle section of this chapter is declaring the acts and words of God. “Let me tell it to you one more time,” Samuel is saying. And he recounts, and some of them might have rolled their eyes and said, “Well here he goes again. It’s the story of Joseph and Moses and Aaron and the history of the deliverance of our forefathers and in the incident with the Moabites and the Ammonites and it’s the same old story over and over again.” But that’s what Samuel had been called to do – to declare the Word of God and nothing but the Word of God. For his entire ministry that’s what Samuel had done. And that’s what he’s doing here in this farewell, in this final testimony to the people. He’s declaring publically once again that his ministry is a ministry of God’s Word. It’s a ministry of the acts and words and deeds and mighty things that God has done.

We need to pray for ministers who will do just that, Samuels in our time that will do just that – who will do what Paul said to the elders at Ephesus, to “preach the whole counsel of God,” to tell it like it is, to hold nothing back, to do it in the proportion that God has revealed in His Word, because Samuel believes that God’s Word is God’s Word. We need to be vigilant in our time to pray for ministers and elders who believe in God’s Word, that the Bible is God’s Word, that the Bible in infallible, that the Bible is inerrant, that every jot and tittle of it, from Genesis to Revelation, is the Word of God. What Wesley said 200 plus years ago is still relevant today – “If there is one error in the Bible, there might as well be a thousand. If there is one error in the Bible, it is not the Word of God.”

Now what was Samuel’s public witness? Well, he preaches their sin - that their request for a king, verse 12, their request for a king in response to the Ammonites. What had the Israelites done when the Baraks and the Moabites and the Philistines and Sisera had come against them? What had Israel done? Verse 9 – “They forgot the Lord their God.” When trouble came, when difficulty came, they resorted to worldly means and they forgot God. What have they just done, when the Ammonites in the previous chapter – he’s brought the history right up to date again when the Ammonites have come against them, what did they do? They asked for a king, a king just like the nations. They forgot the Lord their God. Their default mechanism, to quote something from this morning, their default mechanism was to look to the so-called tried and tested means of the world and they forgot the Lord. They forgot God.

Are you saying tonight, “What’s the relevance of this three thousand-year-old story?” Isn’t this our tale? That again and again when trouble comes, when the telephone rings, when the letter pops through the door, when bad news comes, economic news, health news, family news – we go to pieces. We dive into depths of worry and despair and we do precisely what the Israelites were doing here – forgetting the Lord their God. They should have looked to God. “Have we trials and temptation, is there trouble anywhere? You should never be discouraged – get an insurance policy – you should never be discouraged, take it to the Lord in prayer.”

Now Samuel can do what I can’t do tonight – a fireworks display. To back up the awesomeness of the message that he is proclaiming, he calls upon God to come in thunder and rain in early summer. You know, I was trying to think today what would be the equivalent. I doubt that thunder and rain would have the same effect on us that it had on these people three thousand years ago. The voice of thunder three thousand years ago was almost equivalent to the voice of God Himself. God may have to do something entirely different to bring us to our senses, to bring us to our knees. He may have to bring us to an end of ourselves. He may have to bring us to a limit we never thought imaginable to bring us to our senses, to make us acknowledge that we have put our hope and we have put our trust and we have put our faith in worldly things rather than in the promises of Almighty God.

Well that was Samuel’s message. It brought them to repentance. You see there in verse 19 – “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.’” It brought them to repentance. It brought them to a confession of their sin. Now this is not a chapter all about sin and repentance. It’s a chapter about the Gospel, it’s a chapter about grace, it’s a chapter about the forgiveness of God that covers a multitude of sins. Israel was sinning here with a high hand, but God still bears with them and God is still gentle with them. And God goes on and on with them forgiving their sins.

III. The constancy of Samuel’s private devotion.

Now the third thing I want us to see is not only the consistency of Samuel’s personal life and his public life, but I also want to see the constancy of Samuel’s private devotion. On a couple of occasions in this chapter you’ve seen Samuel resort to prayer, and that is precisely what the people ask for in verse 19 – “Pray for your servants.” You know, there’s a verse in Ezekiel, it’s in chapter 22 in verse 30, and in the King James, in the King James version it says, “There was no one to stand in the gap.” That’s the King James rendition of Ezekiel 22:30. It’s about prayer. There was no one to intercede on behalf of sinners. He looked for someone to intercede and he couldn’t find anyone to stand in the gap.

If you go to London, on the tube, on the underground, those of you who have been to London, you remember when you come to the station the doors open and that very posh-English voice says, “Mind the gap” – between the train and the platform. Samuel stood in the gap. You know, some of us need to stop complaining and stand in the gap. We need to pray more and complain less, not just on our behalf but on behalf of others, on behalf of this whole congregation. Elders, let me make that application to you tonight. Will you stand in the gap? Will you do what Samuel’s doing here? Will you be an interceder? Will you be someone who will intercede on behalf of the people, on behalf of those who are weak, on behalf of those who have been tempted, on behalf of those who have fallen – to stand in the gap and pray on behalf of the people? And notice, what was the content of Samuel’s prayer? And he gives us a flavor of what it is here in these closing verses. In verse 22 for example, “For the Lord will not forsake His people for His great name’s sake.”

That’s a great word isn’t it? God will never forsake His people. Why? What assurance can we have? What confidence? What’s the source? What’s the ground of our assurance that God will not abandon His promise? - because He will not forsake His promise for His name’s sake. You know in Hebrew, somebody’s name is their reputation. God’s reputation is at stake. He’s made a promise. He’s entered into covenant. He has said, “I will be your God and you will be My people” and He won’t back out of that treaty. He won’t abandon His covenant. He won’t abandon His promise. What a great source of assurance.

And then an exhortation in verse 23 to serve Him - “As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you. I will instruct you in the good and right way. Only fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart.” That’s what Samuel prayed – that God’s people would serve Him with all your heart. It’s Mendelssohn’s Elijah – if with all your heart you truly seek Me. What is Joshua 23? “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” You’ve got that written on a poster, a plaque, a painting somewhere in your house - many of you have, I know I have. “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Well don’t forget that! Is that in your house as you enter the front door? Is it there in the hallway? Read it tonight. Remind yourself of a promise you’ve made, and serve Him with all of your heart. “You will seek Me and find Me if you seek Me with all your heart” - Jeremiah 29. You know what Calvin’s motto was? Cor meum offero tibi et sincere – “My heart” [it was open hands with a heart in it] “My heart, I offer it to You, Lord, promptly and sincerely.” That was his personal motto – “My heart, I offer it to You.”

Did you notice what they were doing? They were offering in verse 21 – “Do not turn aside from empty things that cannot profit or deliver for they are empty.” It’s Ligon’s sermon again, isn’t it? It’s Luke 6 again, isn’t it? The people are putting their faith and their hope and their trust in a treasure that does not last.

A piece of equipment that we bought just nine months ago broke today. It’s brand new and it broke! Moth and rust corrupts everything. You put your treasure, your hope, your heart in the things of this world and you’re going to be disappointed every time, every single time. If you love what you desire that’s of this world, more than you love God, you’re not loving Him with all of your heart.

Where’s your treasure tonight? What’s the most important thing to you in all of life? What are you prepared to die for tonight? You’d give everything away for this. It’s Jesus. It’s Jesus. It’s what Samuel says at the very end, “Consider what great things He has done for you.” Will you do that tonight? What great things He has done for you? We could spend an hour now – everyone name one great thing that God has done for you. Let’s start with, “He saved me. He washed away my sin. He brought me to the foot of the cross and took the burden away. He called me a child of God; an heir, and a joint heir with Jesus Christ.”

We were talking to the little children about the resurrection. We shall arise from the dead in glorious resurrection bodies to live in the new heavens and in the new earth, and eye hath not seen nor ear head, neither had it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him. Consider what great things God has done for you. Count your blessings. Name them, one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done. Serve Him. Serve Him with all your heart. Wouldn’t you have liked to have heard that sermon? From an old man with gray hair – well, I have gray hair too.

You know, there’s another far, far better than Samuel. Samuel was a man of integrity, but the one I am thinking about now is spotless and undefiled and separate from sinners, and He says, Jesus says, the Son of God says, “Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Let’s pray together.

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