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The title of this message is Hack a Gag to Pieces. And believe it or not, this wild title, and I just promise you this sermon will be A Wild Journey, is pulled straight from Scripture. It's 1st Samuel 15, starting in verse 32. Then Samuel said, bring Agag, king of the Amalekites here to me. So Agag came to him cautiously. And Agag said, surely the bitterness of death is past. But Samuel said, as your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women. And Samuel hacked Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. Welcome back to Is that in the Bible? My name is Levi Lusko. I'm honored to be your host and to welcome you to Wonder Project's virtual production studio where the hit show House of David, among other projects they're releasing, is in part recorded through movie magic. Here you can take something that was shot on location at another place and all of a sudden be beamed back directly into the set. It's actually low key. Incredible. And this is a reproduction of what for Saul and the Hebrew army would have been like their battlefield camp out, plush for the king, command post, but mobile. Obviously he's not at Gibeah, where his normal throne was. So as they're out fighting at a battle, then they come back at the end of the night for celebration and revelry, which is what was the setting for this event in 1st Samuel 15. The King and all of his generals and armies and lieutenants, they've come back to, you know, sort of like revel in the success because they have just been successful in defeating this Amalekite army. And Saul's even got his trophy to King Agag there on display in his tent. And I don't say this lightly or flippantly at all as I greet you with God's love in my heart at every Fresh Life location, every, every partner church joining in church online. As you, as you listen to this message on the podcast later, I, I, I don't say this, you know, in a trite, in a light way. I, I say this with all seriousness in my heart. This message could save your life. We're about to see and the clip you're going to watch is going to bring you into a moment where the battle's just ended. So everyone's high fiving, everyone's excited. They're about to have, you know, toasts and battlefield stories and, and Saul, right, he's about to have the Gatorade, you know, sort of thrown over, poured over his head by, by his men. They're all so happy. They think this is the highest day ever. But listen to me. God's not pleased. It's almost like we get a split frame, a picture in picture on earth. Oh, everyone's thinking this is the greatest day ever. But then, as we pan up to God to see this from heaven's point of view, God is displeased by these events that his people are so excited about. Watch this clip from episode one of season one of House of David.
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Saul, when you were small in your own eyes, the Lord lifted you up and made you king. Now that you are great in your own eyes, you have rebelled and made yourself evil in the eyes of the Lord. Evil. You have twisted the throne of Israel to your own glory. So you will be given to a twisted power and your own torment. Your mind will be cursed. Get out of my head, sorcerer. I am not sorcerer. I am a messenger. Only Samuel. I was afraid of the people. I kept back the best to sacrifice. I would sacrifice them all. To obey is better than sacrifice, to heed better than the fat of the rams. Rebellion is. Is as the sin of witchcraft. Stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. I was afraid of them. Why? Why would you be afraid of the people? Why are you not afraid of God instead of man? I. I love to. I anointed you. Bless me. Sacrifice with me. You chose me as a king. You are a father to me. God chose you. Now he chooses another. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord your God. So the Lord your God now rejects you as king. His spirit is withdrawn from you. This is my kingdom and my sons after me. Jonathan will fall. You will never rule someone. The Lord has torn the kingdom from you and given it to one greater than you. Who is he? Samuel. Samuel.
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The question is, how did Saul get here? Rejected by God. The kingdom that God had entrusted to him, torn from his hands. The answer is slowly, one step at a time. And that is precisely why we need to take sin so seriously, to not justify it, rationalize it, explain it away or tolerate it. Now backing up the Amalekites, of which Agag was king, who the Israelites were squaring off in battle against here in this story, where, having been victorious, Saul's being raised onto the shoulders of his men, only to find out from the seer, the prophet Samuel coming in, that God was not impressed at all with what happened. We need to understand something of the dynamics and what Amalekite, the nation of the Amalekites, represent in scripture. They become for us A living picture or model of the fleshly nature of the fallen nature of sin. Where of course the Bible says all of us are guilty of sin, but we also have a sinful nature that comes to us through Adam. Romans 5 explains the fallen nature that we have where dead to God because of our sin, we can become alive in Christ through putting our faith in Jesus. Of course, all of that was, was, was prefigured in the law and pictured in, in the Old Testament, but made clear, made explicit through the New Testament. The law came through Moses, but grace and through Jesus. And once we believe in Jesus, we have a new nature, we have a new heart. But until heaven, there is still then the presence of sin. Even forgiven, even changed, even saved, we can still fall into sin's power in being pulled down. I've heard it explained like this. If a snake has its head cut off, you can still end up stepping on the fangs of that snake that can still even move even though it's dead, even though its head's been cut off, there can still be almost that phantom power making it dangerous. And so it is with sin, we as children of God, followers of God, can still be pulled into the old fleshly ways until we get to heaven and there's no more presence of sin. And what the Amalekites in the Old Testament present for us is the picture of how we need to approach sin following Jesus as we are in the New Covenant. And if you want the backstory, 1st Samuel 14:15, of course, Exodus 17 and Deuteronomy 25 explain the relationship between Israel and the nation of the Amalekites. And it is what ended up with God saying, hey, they've had their chance. I've given them the opportunity. Even with Israel being in Egypt, there was a longer period. I'm giving them chance after chance after chance to change. And they did not change. So once Israel came in the sin of the Amalekites, it had reached their final opportunity. God had reached the terminal end of his patience, which he will again, by the way, when Christ returns, the opportunity of the open door of salvation that will run out. God has a very long fuse. He's long suffering, but we must not mistake that, for he will never judge, for he will eventually. And so for the Amalekites, that opportunity had come to a close. And so they were told, the Israelites, you must wipe them out. Saul, as king, was told, in this battle, it must be total, it must be final. God was giving us this picture of how sin is to be dealt with. Because here's the big idea. Sin that is not taken out will take you out. It will get the opportunity. Once it gets a foothold, it will eventually get a chokehold and a stronghold, and then be lethal and fatal. Saul knew this. He was told the rules of engagement from God. And Saul didn't listen. Verse 8 of 1st Samuel 15. He took Agag, who was supposed to die, king of the Amalekites, alive, and he utterly destroyed all the people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he did. He did some listening. But then notice again, verse nine. But Saul and the people spared Agag the best of the sheep, the ox and the fatlings, the lambs, and everything that they deemed good, they were unwilling to destroy. They only destroyed what was despised and worthless. So this is partial obedience, which to God amounts to complete disobedience. Now, Saul pretended to obey. We didn't read it, but when Samuel first arrived, he said, samuel, hey, we're glad you're here. We listened. We did everything God said we're to do. And you know what Samuel said? Huh, that's interesting. Why do I hear the sound of the bleating of sheep? What's the. What's the noise? What's all this? I'm hearing and seeing if you really listened? And because of this disobedience, God said, Verse 11, I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel and he cried out to the Lord all night. Now, this, parenthetically, is what theologians refer to as anthropomorphism. Okay? The idea that God could be sorry that God could regret something, and theologians say that that is when we apply human terminology to someone who is not a human. God is not a man. He does not regret things, because to regret would imply new information. And God, even before Saul was instituted as the king and anointed, knew all of these events were happening. So none of this was a surprise to him. But what we are understanding is how God sees now this action, which was from his permissive will, even though he knew it was gonna reaching the apex of what he was going to allow. And so now he's going to deal with it with a mind to judge. All right, so if we're taking notes, we need to understand something about the descent into sin. And I want you to jot this down so we can see the stages and avoid Saul's foolish mistake. The first is, sin always starts with a small compromise. That's number one. It's the little things. It's not the big things we justify, Right? You don't usually just jump into bed with someone you're not married to. Usually it begins with a little indulgence, looking at what you shouldn't look at, maybe on a social media page, and then a little bit more. We would call it soft pornography, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That one degree, that little concession, that little dishonesty, that small we would call white lie. For Saul, it began simply by him fear, fearing people more than he fears God. And the Bible is clear. If we fear man, if we care what people think about us, we cannot please God. He was supposed to wait for Samuel to arrive to do the chapel service before the battle. There would always be this opportunity to say, hey, we don't trust in our chariots and horses and swords. We trust in the Lord. And Samuel said, don't go to battle till I get there. We'll have a little chapel. So service. And Samuel delayed his coming. And Saul thought, man, he's not coming. And the people said, we just need to get to war. We need to attack them before they attack us. Draw first blood. And so Saul heeded the people and chose to do the chapel service himself. Now, again, this is one of those little gray areas. It's kind of a comp. It's a little. It's like, is that really bad? We had a chapel service. Well, he was supposed to wait for the man of God. You're a king. You're not a prophet. You should have let him do it. But he didn't. He feared the people. And then this was accelerated by pride. So it always is. First Samuel, chapter 13, verse 3, shows us how pride had been for some time, creeping into Saul's heart. There was a different battle, one that Jonathan, Saul's son, had a huge role in bringing about a military victory. And it says, soon after that, Jonathan attacked and defeated the garrison of Philistines at Geba. The news spread quickly among the Philistines. So Saul blew the ram's horn through the land. Okay, do you see this? Jonathan was victorious, but Saul blew the horn. You could say Saul was tooting his own horn, metaphorically, and actually taking credit for what someone had done. He's not honoring and acknowledging Jonathan. He's taking this as, this is my victory, right? Then in first Samuel 15, when Samuel came to deliver this message, God is taking the kingdom back from you. Notice what happened? It says, early the next morning, Samuel went to find Saul. Someone told him Saul went to the town of Carmel to set up a monument to himself. Do you read this? He's literally building a display so that anybody walking by would see this is where Saul kicked butt. This is where Saul won a huge victory. And what a mistake to live a life where we set up a monument to ourselves. It's textbook idolatry where we put something or someone in God's place. And the mistake of doing this is you might get it, but it won't ever do for you what you're hoping it will. As the Bible says, to gain the whole world, but to lose your own soul. What can possibly come out of idolatry besides anxiety and trouble? Because to make anything or anyone God in your life, except for God, is. Is to have a puny, tiny God who can't help you when you need it the most. So Saul was guilty of pride and small compromises. And those things crept and crept and crept and kept taking up more real estate. And that's because of course, they are temptations put into our place by the Father of lies, the one who seeks to murder and steal and destroy the devil himself. And how did the devil become the devil? How did Satan end up in his fate as opposed to Lucifer, the worship leader of heaven? Well, the answer is Isaiah 14, the 5I wills of Lucifer, who was guilty of pride, trying to take more than should have been for his and keeping his eyes on himself. You could say it was pride that made the devil the devil, and he's continually trying to do the same to us. And of course, the only thing that can come from pride is a fall, because God opposes the proud, but gives what grace to the humble? But Saul does not choose humility. And so, second point, he is slowly desensitized. Starts with small compromise, but then it grows, like the proverbial frog in the kettle, that if you boil the water slowly, the frog will never know when it's too hot to jump out. And so eventually he'll be cooked to death, thinking, I'm going to get out in a moment. Now, I don't know who these sick people are that are boiling the frogs, but apparently that's a thing. From this point on in Saul's life, we will see his true colors begin to come out and his gradual backsliding will accelerate into a full blown avalanche where he gets further and further and further from. And by the time we get to the end of the book of 1 Samuel, you can hardly recognize him. And that's because each mistake makes the next one easier to justify. Eugene Peterson once put it this Way the subtlety of sin is that it never feels like sin when we're doing feels right. It feels natural. It feels like the only way I'm going to be happy is to give in and do this. And I think that's why a lot of us, if we're honest, are playing the board game Operation in our lives, trying to get as close as we can to get out what we want without the edges buzzing, without getting caught, without stepping over a line. I think about Samson shouldn't drink alcohol, but he's walking through a vineyard. Well, I'm technically not drinking. I'm just, what are you doing in a vineyard if you're not, you're going to be drinking. Can't touch dead things. And yet what is he doing? Trying to you use a stick to get some honey out of a carcass of a lion. I'm not going to touch the lion, but I'm trying to get as close as I can without actually burning it. A lot of us do that. I want to get as close to the edge but not fall over. How far can I go in this, you know, romantic contact with my girlfriend without actually crossing the line into sin? Where we should be asking the question, how close to God can I stay? How much can my ways please him? Where does it end up? Exactly where Samuel said it would. 1st Samuel 15:23. Rebellion as this, as we heard it in the clip, as the sin of witchcraft. Stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. He said, you think it's a little disobedient. I'm telling you, it's as bad as witchcraft. Which was a warning about where Saul would eventually go. And he did. By the end of his life. What is he doing using witchcraft? Now in the show we see this as Abner's mom, and that is not in the Bible. It's good storytelling and fiction and maybe some speculation based on some non primary sources. But. But what we do know is that Saul did end up seeking a witch. And we do know that Saul, at a younger point of his life outlawed and abolished witchcraft. He was hard on it, but he's come full circle to being third point taken out. Taken out because when you ignore God's instruction, you reject his protection. Hear me, when you ignore God's warnings, you always deactivate the force fields that he wants to keep in place to keep you safe. And the truth is you are indestructible in the will of God. No weapon formed against you can prosper. Walking in God's ways, walking in God's will. But when you choose to lower those force fields by doing what God has commanded you not to do, you can actually keep God from being able to give you what he wants you to have. So no, Saul didn't ruin his life all at once. He did that slowly, one sinful step at a time. And then calamity came and eventually his, his son Jonathan was dead. And Saul's slain body was hanging on the walls of Bet Shean. And because sin wasn't dealt with where it should have been, with the Amalekite nation, that would resurface. If you flash forward many years to the book of Esther, and I can't wait till we get an epic show depicting her story. A fierce hater Jews, Haman would launch a plot to have every Jew on planet Earth exterminated. And it almost worked. Had it not been for the quick thinking and faithful, heroic actions of this godly woman, it would have worked. But God saved his people from being slain by Haman, who the book of Esther tells us was an Agagite. Excuse me, agagite. You mean they descended from this King Agag, the king of the Amalekites, who should have died. The nation should have died, but some of the people were spared. And eventually Haman persisted because of this. He was not supposed to live on that day, he was supposed to die. And because of that, some generation of Agag's descendants later blossomed into full grown death. And that is why Samuel had the sense to do what Saul should have done in the first place. Hack Agag to pieces.
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Soul has passed. The wrath of soul has passed, but the wrath of God has not. As your sword has made women childless, so shall your, your mother be childless for all time. God is not.
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And that is precisely why the New Testament says we must not toy with sin. We must not play with sin. We must not think we're in control. We've kept it contained. We would do this, but never that. We could stop anytime we want, but instead we need to see through those little concessions just a little bit of leaven that eventually will leaven the whole loaf, that it's actually the devil through that small, justifiable, little excusable area of indulgence. He's the roaring lion that he is seeking to devour us. And so we must, like David did, rise up and in the name of the Lord, defeat the lion. We can do so in the name of God with his power, with his spirit, with his word, with the accountability of his people to confess, and through repentance to do what Romans says we must do, like Samuel did to Agag. If we live according to the flesh, we will die. But if you by the spirit put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. This book does not just tell us, oh, just think nice thoughts and love God and sort of do whatever you feel like doing. No, this book says, God, crucify the flesh, deny yourself, pick up your cross, Jesus said, and follow me. And if you find a little bit of sin in your life, man, you gotta get radical with it. Be willing to cut off that offending hand, pluck out that eye there. Maybe you can't have Internet around you without other people around you. You have to be willing to do what to the world would be crazy or abnormal. This must be our mentality following Jesus. As John Owen put it, you have to kill your sin before your sin will kill you. My dad, my hero, my best friend, Chip Lusko, he died of pancreatic cancer not too long ago. And I remember when we first discovered the cancer was there in his pancreas. We booked an appointment for him to go to a hospital and have that cut out. And our mentality was cut it all out, get every last bit out. And that bottom time. And eventually, while even the chemo and all that was still happening, even with all the he was receiving, the. The cancer came back. And when it came back into his pancreas, it didn't stay there, it spread into his lungs and it spread into his liver. It was eating him from the inside out. And of course, by God's power, my dad, a believer, is with Christ in heaven. God conquered over cancer and brought him to be with him at home. But our mentality wasn't toy with it, just get a little bit out or you know, just hopefully he can think nice thoughts. But no, we wanted to cut that out. And that's a picture of what sin is inside of the life. But the good news is today, no matter where you're at with this all, following Jesus and what concessions for sin there are in your life, and that's true for all of us. There are areas where we're all playing with fire. I speak this over you in the fourth and final point. Today, God offers you a fresh start. These small compromises that will slowly desensitize us and take us out if we're not careful, if we will hear God's voice, if we will follow him, if we'll wake up and come to our senses, even if some consequences remain. I mean, Samson, who dabbled with the devil ended up losing his eyes. And so yes, some consequences on this earth might remain. But listen to me. Samson's hair did begin to grow again. God gave him another opportunity. And I speak that over you. I speak in the name of Jesus, the resurrection power of God that can cause there to be rejoicing, that can cause there to be new life and new growth. He can bring the valley of dry bones to life. He can turn what's toxic into what's fresh. He can even restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten. My friend. Pastor Craig Groeschel has said that Satan loves to make strong men weak, but God loves to make weak men strong. And so no matter what you've allowed sin to take from you or from your marriage, or from your calling, or from your ministry or from your life, if today you'll get serious and follow God with your whole heart and repent genuinely, not just being sad you got caught, but being sad it made the heart of God sad and turn to him with a full heart and invite the kind of accountability and sunshine and kind of confession that can bring healing and wholeness. These bones, if set properly, can heal stronger than had they never been broken in the first place. And there is no sin so small that it doesn't need to be confessed. There's no sin so small that, that we don't need. Oh, that's not a big deal. No, you need to apply the blood of Jesus Christ and change your testimony and change the way you talk about it. And I also tell you that there is no sin so big that it can't be forgiven. If you said, well, Levi, you don't know what I've done. I don't need to know. Jesus knows and he paid for it on the cross. And so today I'm praying, Father, for every brother and sister walking with Jesus who has areas of shadow, areas of secrecy, hidden addictions and habits that have not been brought out into the light. We've been kept silent thinking, oh, if people knew, they wouldn't accept me, if they knew what I've struggled. We need to bring that into the sunlight. We need to let other people know so they can pray for us, encourage us, hold our arms up. And I pray even now, just in this moment, if you would say, hey, there's areas that I need to get serious. There's some agags that need to be hacked to pieces in my heart, in Jesus name, with the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, a two edged sword. If that's You I'm describing, could you just raise up a hand saying, God, I need. I need. There's some agag. I need to. I need to execute in my heart to crucify the flesh so I can live. I want you, Jesus, to cut out those. Those tumors in my soul. Thank you, God. I pray for that repentance. I pray for that change. I pray for power over indwelling sin until we're glorified in your presence. And that we'll have to keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it to keep our guards up. You can put your hands down. I now, in this moment, want to invite anybody who's here at your church, watching online, and you need to take a step into life in Christ. The goal isn't I need to change, I need to. I need to grow. No, listen. God cleans his fish after he catches them. You don't become a Christian by removing all the sinful parts of your life. No, you come to Christ without one plea. You come to Christ saying, only because of what Jesus did on the cross can I be saved and set free and have the promise of heaven. Because of what he. He did, he said, it is finished. And then after he comes to live inside of your heart, which he will do today, if you ask him, you continue the one day at a time, step of step of step of sanctification, growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And the salvation isn't based on you, it gets placed on you. And then in that loving relationship, walking with God, you continue the practice of denying yourself, picking up your cross not so that he'll be happy with you, but because he already is and he'll never stop. So if you're here today and you would say, I want to. I want to give my life to Jesus, I would be so honored to pray with you with heads bowed and eyes closed. Let's pray. If you trust in Jesus, he'll save you. I believe that's why you're listening to this right now. Church pray with us. No one praying alone. All of us praying together say, dear God, I know that I'm a sinner and I see what great danger I am in, heading each day towards a Christless eternity. Thank you for sending your son to strap himself into my electric chair and die. I turn from my sins. I turn to you in faith. Come into my heart. Make it your home. Help me to follow you. Fill me with the spirit that raised Jesus from the dead and help me to walk in victory over my sinful nature. One day at a time, in Jesus name.