Potential: Being All God Wants You to Be!
Part II

I Samuel 14:24-30

In Potential Part I we spoke of a great spiritual awakening that was taking place in our country and other parts of the world. But it wasn't a spiritual awakening in the sense that people are looking to God the Father through the Son Jesus Christ. It's just that people are looking outside of themselves and realizing that there is more than likely something or someone that is greater than they are, but they just don't know how to get there or who it is they are looking for really.

That is why we have so much potential in the age in which we are living. Not that there is anything special about us. But its the fact that we have the Holy Spirit living and dwelling and working inside of us if we are truly born again and walking by the Spirit. We do not have the ability to lead people to Christ, nor do we have the ability to save folks. All we can do is deny ourselves, crucify that "old sin man" that rears up no and again and allow the Holy Spirit to minister to others through us.

Nontheless we have been given a great amount of potential, but like was said in part I with great potential comes great responsibility. We must be sharing our faith in the Way, the Truth and the Life with other folks around us and those that God puts in our pathways. We must be discipling those that have come to know Christ as their Savior. We must help guide them into allowing Jesus to be their Lord as well.

In part I we looked at a man named Saul. We said he was the first king of Israel. He was really the George Washington of his day. And we looked at the package of potential that he received from the Lord.

The Bible says he was a handsome man and that he was a head taller than all those around him. The average Israelite was 5-foot to 5-5, so he stood some-where between 6-foot and 6-5.

Not only was he tall and handsome, but he was also a gifted speaker. The Holy Spirit prophesied through him. God also blessed him with the gift to lead others like no one else could. And men followed him into battle and did just as he commanded them.

We saw that he was given wisdom in that he didn't make the valiant men kill their brothers, who had been mocking the leadership of Saul. He said that they were to only kill the enemies of Israel, not their brothers.

Saul had a great package of potential that God had given him and we started to look at our potential and how we can be all that God wants us to be. And we said that if we won't to be the sons and daughters of God that He wants us to be we are going to have to avoid the pitfalls that Saul fell into.

The first one we looked at in part I was the arrogant disobedience of Saul or the arrogant and puffed up attitude that he had toward himself.

Saul's attitude toward the Holy Spirit when He spoke through Samuel was umph I offered the sacrifce . . . I'm a king . . . I don't have to play by the rules . . . it wasn't my fault you were late . . . I did it . . . what of it.

If you and I are to be the disciples that God wants us to be we have to be humble and willing to obey when He gets in our face and confronts us with something that is going on in our lives that needs to stop or He shows us something that needs to start happening in our lives.

Well let's take a look at the second part of Saul's life and how we can avoid the traps that eventually swallowed Saul up.

Jonathan says in the passage of Scripture that "My father has troubled the land.”

Here's the deal. The Philistines were not farmers like the Israelis or others Cannanite people. They Israelis and the Cannanites want to own the land. They want to work the land and live off what the land produces. God even made a covenant with the nation of Israel concerning the land. Most people refer to it as the Land Covenant.

But the Philistines weren't farmers. They didn't want to own land, and they certainly didn't want to work the land. The Philistines were sea faring people that lived along the Gaza Strip. What they would do is they would build gar-risons in the Gaza Strip and they would let the Israelis and other Cannnaite tribes work the land for them.

The Philistines were only interested in the three movable crops of that day, which were daughters for prostitutions, sons for slaves and wheat crops. So what would happen is they would wait until there was a large supply of all three that were available and then they would raid the area and still the grain, daughters and sons.

They would then take them back to the sea, load them up on ships and then ship them out all across the Mediterranean area for profit. Then they would wait for more to develop and start over again. These people were pirates.

And this is what has just happened when we get to our passage of Scripture. The Philistines have just raided the Israelites and they are weighted down with countraband and the Israelites recognize that they have a possibility of am-bushing them because they are moving so slow and they could possbily get their stuff back along with their sons and daughters.

The men of Israel are ready to charge into battle. And there's ole Saul. He's still as handsome as ever. He's still taller than anyone around. He's still a great leader. But what has happened is now Saul is walking in disobedience.

Saul's entire world has started to revolve around him not God, which means his reality is rational truth. Whatever he can rationlize in his own mind will be truth to him, instead of the Truth that God gives.

But the world now revolves around Saul and his personal needs. And once you and I are in disobedience the world starts to revolve around us and we start living in an alternate universe that is not real for anyone else other than ourselves.

Saul tells his men to take an oath. And oathes in the ancient world were taken very seriously. You just didn't break an oath. Your word was extremely val-uable. It was like blood.

And he says take an oath that you won’t eat any food until MY enemies and MY reputation have been avenged. We see that in verse 24, and that verse reeks with selfishness, but the Israelites take the vow anyway, because Saul it their leader. He is still a very powerful and impossing man.

But what is funny is it wasn’t really about him. It was his people’s stuff that had been hijacked. But in his mind it made perfect sense, because in the confines of his new reality brought on by disobedience he saw himself as God now.

And what happens is when we are in disobedience we start making bad de-cisions when we don’t even really mean to. And here you have an army that is catching up to their enemy. They have a shot at getting their stuff back. But all the armor they are carrying is weighing them down and they are just marching, marching, marching. . . without any breaks and they are beginning to slow down.

The soldiers are tired. They need some sustenance. And low and behold what do they come upon, but a gift from God. They find honey. The ancient people knew what a sugar rush would do. They knew what that pure raw natural honey would do. It’s a natural high.

But instead of eating it they stand around with these awful looks on their faces salivating over this honey they can’t eat, because they took an oath.

So along comes Jonathan the king's own son and he runs up and says look at this boys a gift from God. Sugar rush. He dips his staff in the honey and in-stantly his eyes brighten from the rush. He wasn’t there when his father made the people take an oath and so he knows nothing about it. He says come on boys eat this honey and let’s go get those Philistines. We’ve got them now.

And he says why aren’t you eating it? And they said we can’t, your dad made us take an oath. What kind of oath? He said we can’t eat anything until he had avenged himself on his enemies. Sorry Jonathan we can’t go any further.

So Jonathan says my father has troubled the land.

When we are in disobedience we give bad advice. It doesn’t matter what is going to happen to your friends or loved ones. When we are in disobedience we can’t see the effects on the other person nor do we really care, because it’s all about us.

When you are in disobedience things make perfect sense at the moment, but they have horrible, horrible ramifications in the future.

Unfortunately, disobedience is not a rock that gets tied around us and then thrown into a lake and we drown. The rock hits the people around us and the ripples just start going out in waves.

See we live in a universe that operates on the law of the harvest. We reap what we sow. And what we reap effects not only us, but the people around us.

Everything we do has an effect on other people. Whether we get up in the morning and brush our teeth has an effect on people. Whether we get up in the morning and get dressed has an effect on people. For some of us whether or not we get our morning cup of coffee has an effect on others.

Everything we do is going to effect other people. And when we are in dis-obedience to God we make poor decisions for ourselves and we give poor advice to others.

The longer we walk in disobedience the more selfish we become, and we won’t even notice it. The people around us will, but we'll be the last to know, because everything makes sense to us.

The story of Saul doesn’t end there though.

The longer we walk in selfishness either defending our sin or oblivious to it we finally grow into complete bitterness.

Look at I Samuel chapter 18 starting in verse six and read down through verse nine.

Verse six is the key. It says they were coming back from killing THE Philistine. The word THE used here is a definite article unlike the indefinite article "a." If it would have said they returned from killing a Philistine that would have meant any number of Philistines. But it says they returned from killing THE Philistine. And there is only one THE Philistine.

There was one distinct Philitine the writer is talking about here and that's Goliath. They are returning from killing Goliath.

Quickly here's the Goliath story.

The Israeli army is gathered on one side of a dry river bed called a wadi and the Philistine army is gathered on the other side. There’s nothing happening. David is too young to fight, but he’s been sent by his father Jesse to deliver something to his brothers. While he’s there nothing is happening and his brothers try to rush him back home, but David doesn’t want to go home. He wants to hang out and see the Israelis kill some of these Philistines in the name of Yaweh God.

But he finds out why nothing is going on, because they hear this booming voice coming from across the way and as Goliath lifts his sword up he chal-lenges the army of Israel to choose a man to fight one-on-one against him and to the winner goes the spoils.

He questions the army of the Israelis, because no one would challenge him. He just continues to push their buttons, taunting them to come out and fight.

But what you have here is an army of 5-foot to 5-5 men against an army of giants and especially Goliath who stands somewhere between 9 foot and 12 foot tall.

And here’s little David, who’s probably a foot shorter than any of the Israelis who steps up and says who’s going to got out there and shut this guy up. And one by one each one came up with an excuse.

And when no one would take a stand David said I’ll do it. So Saul puts his armor on him and David is unable to use it. It probably swallows him up. He was around a foot shorter than the normal Israelite, which meant he was two-foot shorter than Saul. So it just wasn’t working.

David tells everyone that God will protect him just like He did when he fought and killed a lion and a bear while tending sheep.

So he waltzes out into the wadi and says hey you need to shut up about my God. And after Goliath recovers from laughter he says would Yaweh send a boy to do a man’s job. Well let me tell you something Yaweh boy I’m about to cut you up and feed you to the birds.

And David said bring it on buddy my God will deliver you into my hands. And David takes that sling and whap right between the eyes and Goliath falls to the ground.

David pulls out Goliath’s sword and chops his head off and when the Philistines see that their champion was dead they fled. And now filled with power the Israeli army plunders the Philistines.

And now they are coming back from killing THE Philistine in verse six.

Watch this closely, we’re almost done.

If we are in our right mind . . . we’re thinking clearly, because we are in the channel . . . we’re walking in obedience we know that the women are not giving glory to David or Saul.

The women were glorifying God. What they are saying is that God uses Saul to kill thousands and He uses David to kill ten thousands.

What that means is that our God uses an awesome soldier to kill thousands and who would have thought but He uses a little shepherd boy to kill ten thousand. Our God is always doing something unique. They weren’t giving glory to David or Saul.

And if we are in our right mind we don’t have any problem with that. If we are living within the channel and walking with God that makes perfect sense. But when we are walking in disobedience we become selfish, because we are the master of our own universe and the more selfish we become the more we start to recognize that people aren’t responding to us. People are getting burned by us right and left. And when those people start to move away from us and our pile of stuff starts to get smaller and smaller the more we start to try to hold on and fight for what we still have.

Look at the bitterness in Saul. He cries out ooooooooeeeeee they are saying that I only killed thousands and that he killed ten thousands. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him. I know what he wants. He wants to get my kingdom. He wants to get my stuff. It’s mine. It’s mine. It’s mine. It belongs to me. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.

What a pathetic ending to one of the greatest men of the Old Testament. But that’s what happens if we stay in disobedience. Because the longer we walk in disobedience the more we have to rationalize the silly things we are doing.

We have to rationalize why we are holding a grudge or why we are cheating on our spouses or why we are cheating on our taxes or why we are cheating in school or why we are gossiping about our neighbor, or whatever it is that we do.

The longer we go the higher we build the walls of our Neverland universe. And the higher the walls go up the harder it is to hear from the voices of truth. The harder it will become for us to hear from the Holy Spirit. Or the harder it will become for us to hear from a brother or sister in the Lord that the Spirit is trying to use to get our attention. The harder it will be to hear the truth in the messages on Sundays and Wednesdays or any other time we try to listen, read or study the Word.

Partly because we will start to run from the truth and another part is because the truth starts to run from us.

Saul gets so pathetic that he has no friends and he goes to a witch and begs her to call up Samuel from the dead to tell him what to do. In the end he dies doing what no hard-core Israelite would ever do. He commits suicide when one of his servants refuses to kill him.

And when the Philistines found his body, they cut off his head and hung his naked body on a wall.

Don’t let bitterness and jealousy ruin your potential.

We have been given much, but much is going to be required of us. The question still remains. What are we going to do with our potential.

We have become a very selfish people here in America. And I’m not just talking about nonbelievers. I’m talking about believers. In the book of Revelation it says that the Laodicean church said to itself that I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing. But God said no you are wretched, miserable, naked and poor.

Folks we will never out grow our need for God. And we must remain obedient to Him in all that He calls and commands us to do. May we be people that are actively seeking to reach the potential that God has placed within each of us.