OBF Support Group

Who should be there?

Everyone who shares God’s Word to groups in the church. i.e. active Christian workers.

•   Kids next door – those who care for the children of the church
•   Youth – those who lead Bible studies for the youth
•   Adults’ grp – those who do the public teaching on Sun morning
•   Worship team—those who choose and play the music on Sun morning
•   Women’s group—those who lead studies for the women of the church
•   Home group—those who share and lead studies in their home groups
•  One-to-One -- those doing bible studies with individuals
•  Anyone interested in becoming an active worker in the church should attend.

What will happen at that meeting?

Part 1

At each meeting, two people will prepare an outline of what they are going to speak about to one of the church groups in the near future and talk about that with the group.

Others at the meeting will share their insights and encouragements about what those two have shared.  The aims of this are to teach and encourage each other from these message outlines; help each of us to get a clearer understanding of the themes we will be sharing; and allow us to support each other with prayer.

Part 2

Brief discussion that anyone wants to have about the work they are doing in the church. Get advice, get some helpers etc.

Part 3

Pray about what we have discussed 

When will this happen?

Twice per month (i.e. every second week)—starting this weekend 6 July, Sunday afternoon 4.30pm –5.45pm at the Chapel. (At that meeting we will decide whether that time suits most people.)

1 Samuel 16 Who is fit to serve God?

1 Samuel 16.1-13

This passage is about God's choice for a king to replace Saul. He wanted a responsive man, someone with a heart ready to be taught and filled with his life.   

Acts 13.22 After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: "I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do."
A 'man after my own heart' means a man who follows my desires--that is, a responsive, obedient heart that desires what God desires and does what pleases God.


Disappointment (v1).
Samuel was grieved by Saul's failure and  it must have seemed that Israel (Samuel's life's work!) was failing.  God's answer to his disappointment was: "How long will you grieve? Accept my decision and move on."

Has something not turn out the way you expected and wanted?  Has a cherished idol has been removed and you are grieving? How long will you mourn and be depressed. It's time to accept the loss and get on with putting in place what SHOULD have been there--the gap left by your idol must be filled by God. Be careful your grieving doesn't turn into bitterness.

Lost a relationship?  A possession?  A hero?  An opportunity?  Health?  Money? Career? Accept the loss--recognise God's hand in it -- move on.  Don't wallow in "why, why"--turn your face to God and ask, "what now?".  The loss of something or someone is a game-changer--some things have come to an abrupt end--new things are about to begin.  Find them in Christ!

God was ready to move on to the next thing, but Samuel was still stuck in his disappointment.

God provides people to do his work (v1)  Israel had a crack at providing the kind of leader THEY liked and their choice of Saul had proved disastrous. Now God was going to provide a servant-leader who reflected HIS priorities.

These events show that God provides people who will carry out HIS plans in HIS way. A Christian leader is not a stunning, charismatic personality--it is a person God will use as his instrument to make CHRIST look good! The Church has one leader:Jesus Christ.  Those who are great in God's kingdom are those who can distribute (pass on) more of Christ's good things for the building up of his people; they are not bosses.

God told Samuel that the new king will come from Bethlehem--a hint that we should be paying attention to this new man, David, for lessons about the One True Leader (Messiah) who would be David's descendant. God would use David's kingship to provide a very rough outline sketch of Christ -- a sketch that would hint at an ideal King -- that could only be fulfilled by Jesus.

We look 'through' faithful believers (such as, Samuel and David) to recognise Christ, just as we look not at a window but we look through it.

Samuel's dread.  Samuel began to feel isolated.  He feared that Saul would kill him as a traitor  if he went and anointed another man as king of Israel. God's answer to Samuel's fear was to tell him to go by faith--step forward--"I will show you what to do". Obeying God can put you into a lonely place, but this is an invitation to faith. Trust and obey for he will show you what to to do (v3).

Bethlehem's dread.  Samuel's reputation as the instrument of God's judgement on Agag (15.32) may be the reason for the town of Bethlehem feeling fearful of Samuel's visit.  Samuel's life and influence was saturated with the Spirit of God -- including God's righteousness -- different to the way those people were living.

As God clothes you with his clean new life, don't be surprised if some people dread being around you! A desire to please everyone is the path to compromise--just like King Saul, who didn't carry out his mission against the Amalekites because he was afraid to go against the opinions of his men. We are called to reflect God's character, not be a mirror of the world's opinions.


God is not deceived by 'image'.  God evaluates a person by examining the heart. Samuel had to work out which of Jesse's sons was God's choice for the next king of Israel. Outward appearance had caused Israel to make a wrong choice of Saul, who was head and shoulders above the rest of the nation in men's eyes--but stunted in God's.

Eliab, Jesse's oldest son, looked the part--but there were flaws in his heart that caused God to reject him. Same with Abinadab, Shammah and five more of Jesse's sons. Their hearts were not open and available to be shaped by God, they were seeking other things--not God.

Our thoughts and actions are directed by our hearts (Romans 8.5-8). If our hearts are set on wrong stuff, the daily outworking of our lives will be wrong. Daily we have to:
1. get our hearts aligned with Christ (by paying close attention to his Word);
2. get our thinking and actions aligned with our hearts (walk in the Spirit).

A heart that God approves of his soft (a heart of flesh, not stone. Ezekiel 36.25-27) A heart of flesh not stone, means one that is willing and open to God's influence.

God chooses differently to men.
Jesse had discounted David, his youngest son.  He was out in the fields shepherding the family's flocks of sheep.  But the one overlooked by men (even his own father!) was the very one God had in mind. Samuel had gotten no confirmation from God's Spirit that any of the men passing before him was the one God wanted him to anoint as next king of Israel.

Families can often 'decide' who is the prominent one who is going to promote the family name and receive all the kudos--often that is not the way God has arranged things.  He deliberately takes what is overlooked by men and shows his power in a person who seemed young, inexperience, or ordinary. Paul reminded Timothy: "Don't be timid or ashamed. God has given you a spirit of love, power and self-control."  He also told him: "Don't let others look down on you because you are young" (in other words, don't think that because others talk down to you, you have nothing to contribute--you are God's man.)

Samuel saw something in David.  Ruddy--means healthy--outdoorsy (not pale and soft). He had beautiful eyes.  'Eyes are the window to the soul'.  Some people have a mean, hard or deceitful look in their eyes.  It is not the shape or size of their eyes--but there is something about the expression of a person's eyes that gives away what their true nature is really like. David's eyes were beautiful--not in a cosmetic sense (i.e. not describing long eyelashes, brilliant colour)--but in an alert, kind and genuine way.  God confirmed to Samuel that THIS was his man after God's own heart.

What was different about David's heart to those of his brothers?  David's heart was still open to God -- it wasn't calloused (hardened) by habitual sins. It was still child-like -- not perfect or sinless, but expecting instruction -- dependent.  His heart was not already equipped to do great things--but neither was it already crammed with godless habits. God choose to work in a callow youth -- still green and raw.

Two things happened:
1. Samuel gave an outward sign that God was setting David apart as his man (the oil).
2. The Holy Spirit 'rushed' upon David.  Not 'lightly sprinkled'. This was a gushing if you think of water as the metaphor.  It was a gale if you think of a wind metaphor. Either way, it was transformational! It rearranged David's life. The Holy Spirit does that!Samuel poured a little oil on David's head--but the Holy Spirit baptised him with spiritual life.  And this was an ongoing experience in David's long life.

We too must constantly be filled up with the Holy Spirit to be fit to serve God.  We cannot complete our calling without what God puts into our hearts: His Spirit. We can't 'crank up' the influence of the Holy Spirit by any human activity. We receive the Spirit. He finds his home in broken, willing hearts.

Pay attention to the condition of your heart. A good place to start is found in one of David's songs:

Psalm 139.23,24
Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if their be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

Saul's Fading Faith

1 Samuel 13

Saul quickly slipped away into defensive mode as king of Israel. He was interested in preserving what he had—he had no vision to expand to regain territory lost to the enemy. He didn't possess the kind of faith that moved him to push back enemies. He kept a relatively small army divided between himself and his son, Jonathan, because he wasn't planning on fighting anytime soon!  Jonathan was much more eager to engage the enemy.

When Jonathan attacked a Philistine outpost, it stirred a response from the Philistine army.  Saul took credit for his son’s action and called up all the men of Israel to resist the Philistines.

The Philistine army far out-‘gunned’ the Israelites. Once Israel saw the extent of Philistine superiority, they melted away and took cover wherever they could find it—so Saul was left with a severely reduced force. Clearly Saul and Israel figured that the only way to beat the Philistines was to have a superior force—but it didn't seem to occur to them to rely on God.

Samuel had told Saul to wait for him to come and make sacrifices to God on behalf of Israel and to seek God’s victory. But every day that went by saw more and more of Saul’s army desert him.

At that point, with still no sign of Samuel, Saul took matters into his own hand.  He took on the priest’s role and offered the sacrifices.  Just as he was doing so, Samuel arrived—shocked that Saul should be so presumptuous as to offer sacrifices he had no business handling.

Saul makes the excuses that he was losing his men and Samuel was late, and the Philistines were growing in strength with each passing day. 

Samuel rebukes Saul because he ignored God’s command to wait. If he had waited on God in faith, God would have established his kingship to the following generations.  As it was, he had punched a hole in the bottom of his own boat and his kingship was sinking fast.  God was already preparing the next man to be king—a man who cared about God’s ways and would be obedient.

Saul was left with 600 nervous soldiers—there was no way he could fight the Philistines. It seems that the Philistines didn't even bother fighting with Saul—they just exerted some more pressure on Israel—sending out raiding parties to scare the Israelite towns.  One of their strategies was to confiscate weapons from Israel and to capture or kill Israel’s iron and bronze-workers (blacksmiths) so that there was no one who could make swords and spears—or even to sharpen their plows and other farming equipment.  In this way they made Israel militarily and economically weak.  Saul and his son were the only ones with weapons!

Things to consider:

·         Why did Saul’s faith evaporate?

·         Why did Jonathan’s initial attack fizzle out?

·         Why was it important that Saul did not act as a priest, but waited for Samuel?

·         How was Saul responding to Samuel’s mentoring?

·         Why was Saul’s decision to force himself to make the sacrifice, the one that sunk his kingship?

·         What happened to Israel when they gave ground to the enemy?

·         In what ways does Saul’s failure warn us about failing as a man of God?

·         What might it mean for a Christian or a Church to have Saul’s policy of ‘maintenance’ rather than ‘expansion’.

·         What weapons is the Enemy keen to take away from Christians?

·         What does this episode teach us about how to resist the Devil effectively?

·         How would a ‘man after God’s heart’ have responded to this challenge?

·         Jesus is the ultimate ‘man after God’s heart’, how should we engage with him in fighting the enemy?

A Poke in the Eye

The more I think about the deal that Nabash offered the people of Jabesh Gilead (1 Samuel 11.1-2), the clearer it is to me that  that whenever we opt for a compromise, or cut a deal with the world, it always involves severe loss--e.g.getting an eye poked out.  These compromises never come free. The enemy drives a cheeky bargain--he knows how much we crave for certain things and he will push hard for a serious payment. And depending how vulnerable we feel, we may pay up.

His evil purpose runs deeper than just causing us misery--he aims to bring disgrace on God's people (v2) and beyond that his ultimate aim is to tear at God's glory. He sees our weakness as a way to do it.

Perhaps we would be more resistant to compromise if we realised that we are not just risking ourselves when submit to his eye-gouging, but we are bringing disgrace on God's people (discouraging them) and being used as pawns in an attack on God's glory.

Two things, then, that show how costly compromise with the world is:

1. Compromise always comes with serious loss (in this case 1/2 their eyesight).
2. There is even a bigger defeat than personal consequences if we compromise, because we are being manipulated into disgracing the Church and attacking God's glory.

Resolution:
Submit yourself to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. James 4.7
Put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Eph 6.13

Feeling Some Passion

1 Samuel 11.

God created a situation that ignited Saul’s passion for God’s cause. [Lack of godly passion is the underlying cause of our boredom, slackness, fear and defeat.]

The Ammonites picked on Jabesh-Gilead, laying siege to that town in Israel.

The people’s first response was to try and negotiate their way out of trouble—but the Ammonites’ demands were too humiliating: the blinding of one eye of every person. It is a sign of the times that these Israelites first thought of compromise when threatened by their enemies. It seems that God was not their first refuge. They had come to think only in terms of material and physical resources. Also, they had no thoughts about God’s honour. It never occurred to them to plead with God on the grounds that HE was being dishonoured by the attacks of the Ammonites. It was all about them and their petty little world.

[We can become so spiritually cold that we only think of our troubles in terms of our personal discomfort and whether we have the natural resources to overcome them. We do the maths…but leave out God. We scheme and figure ways to minimise the damage caused by our troubles…but we don’t fall on our face before God.  We weigh up the shame we are prepared to endure…but we don’t consider the shame our situation brings to God’s name.  We don’t plead that God will correct us and defeat our enemies for the sake of HIS glory.]

When the news about Jabesh-Gilead’s predicament reached other places, people wept—but they neither prayed to God nor acted.  A defeated mindset had settled over Isreal.  They didn’t like the attacks of their enemies, but they couldn’t see any way out of them.

[Right now, the Church is under siege (like the town of Jabesh-Gilead). The world is demanding that the Church admit that the Bible is a bigoted, hate-filled book that has nothing relevant to say to 21^st Century people. Some Christians are wavering and prepared to water down Bible truths--prepared to become one-eyed—in hope that the world will leave them alone.]

But this disaster was the moment God had orchestrated for Saul and Israel’s benefit.  Saul started to feel something at last! Indignation gripped Saul.  The Holy Spirit rushed on him so that he burned with anger against the shame that was being visited upon God’s people. He took strong action. He demanded that Israel arise and resist the Ammonites. The butchered oxen emphasised the seriousness of the call to arms—oxen were costly—and this was a costly call.

God put a serious attitude upon the people and the men of Israel armed themselves and stepped up—330,000 of them. The Ammonites were caught completely by surprise and their force was decimated.

God used this situation to establish Saul’s credibility as a leader in the eyes of Israel (and her enemies).  He also used the situation to establish Saul’s belief that God could work in and through him for the sake of His name.

[Look around you—listen—observe what havoc the enemy is working. Stir the ashes of your spiritual passion for God. Feel pity for the oppressed. Feel indignant that Christ is slandered and portrayed as feeble. Look for a fight that he will prepare for you—something you can pray against, speak his word into and pull others in to struggle against.  Will you let the enemy poke your eye out? Will you draw a line and say, ‘NO, I won’t sacrifice the truth for an expensive truce with evil’?  Saul was not strong or confident in himself—but when the Spirit of God rushed on him, he became a man.] 

If you ask for the Holy Spirit, your Heavenly Father will give him to you. (Luke 11.13).

Stages on a Journey to Serve God

1 Samuel 10.1-16

We are learning how God prepares opportunities for us to engage by faith in his work--in spite of our shortcomings. Saul was a poor choice for King of Israel, but he was the kind of man the people hankered for. So God gave them what they wanted--but he also furnished Saul with opportunities to be a better man. Saul's life warns us not to miss the opportunities God provides for us to put off our old selves and be remade fit to work for his glory.

Samuel took Saul aside and anointed him with oil. The oil represents the Holy Spirit who sets persons apart for God's work, provides the power to do it and blesses them in it. 

[Go to the book of Acts and notice how the Holy Spirit was always there when new initiatives were set in motion and when people were prepared and sent to out to build the church. Reflect on your experience of the Holy Spirit. How is his work of separating you out for God's holy purposes happening in you? Noticeable?]

Samuel informed Saul that:

1. God had selected him to lead the people of Israel.
2. Signs at three different locations would be given to confirm this as the Lord's word.

Samuel sends Saul on a staged journey, with three confirmatory signs along the way, so that he would know that God is with him and that he is moving towards God's planned destination for him.

[Do you pray about your path? Are you making random direction changes without consulting God--or even your brothers, sisters or mentors? Do you think if you prayed for your future, God could provide some encouraging signs at various stages--so you can be sure you are on track?]

Stage 1. Rachel's Tomb.

Rachel's tomb is a marker that points towards the coming of a future king--King Jesus. You find throughout the Old Testament signposts and types that point towards the One to whom all history points: Jesus Christ.  Saul's brief pause at Rachel's tomb is one of those signposts. It calls to mind that God's work is greater than Saul. 

Alongside the road to Bethel was a monument to Rachel, Jacob’s wife (Genesis 35).She died and was buried there by Jacob on the way to Ephrath (i.e. Bethlehem). Rachel was pregnant but went into hard labour before they made it to Bethlehem. Rachel died and her baby, Benjamin survived (Gen 48.7). Jacob set up a cairn of rocks there over her tomb. Generations later, a descendant of Rachel would make a similar painful journey towards Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph would have ridden past Rachel's tomb--the significance of which would not have been lost on Mary.  By God's grace she made it to Bethlehem and there gave birth to the King above all others, Jesus. 

In the time of Samuel, God was preparing an interim king, Saul, who would turn out to fall short of his calling and be just one in a long line of evidences that Christ alone is worthy to lead God's people. Samuel directed Saul past his ancestor Rachel's, tomb and there to be reminded that the word was out: "Where's Saul?" Saul's future was coming looking for him.He could have taken great encouragement from this, but unlike his forefather, Jacob, he was not desperate for the promises of God. 

[It is very encouraging when we go out after God's calling and meet it on the road inviting us to come this way!]

Stage 2. Bread for the journey

As far as we know this Oak at Tabor was just a well-known old tree that was a familiar landmark by the road. At that place, God provided some bread to sustain Saul and his servant in their journey. God was proving to Saul that he would supply his needs when he stayed on the path he was send down. [He will so that for you, too. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be provided for you.]

Stage 3. Meeting the prophets

The hill of God--this is Bethel, where God revealed himself in a vision to Jacob and he learned that the Lord stands at the head of everything and that everything on the earth comes and goes at his command and control (Gen 28).  At this place, Saul would have his personal revelation of God--he would be filled with the Holy Spirit and speak praises to God.

All these signs were fulfilled and Saul experienced the influence of the Holy Spirit. He was 'changed into another man'--in other words, Saul's normal attitude was subdued and he acted out of character for Saul--he began praising God and speaking God's messages while he was amongst the group of prophets.

[It seems that it is possible for someone to fall under the influence of the Holy Spirit by association with others, without a permanent work being done in the person. How can we be sure that we are properly receiving the Spirit and not just being affected by association with other Spirit-filled persons?]

Samuel urged Saul to grasp any and all opportunities that he could see around him at this time--for God was with him.  In other words, Saul should take strong actions and not hold back.

[How can we keep the flow of God's blessing and power going on our lives? Is it possible we are too passive and lacking in confidence in the Holy Spirit--so we let slip opportunities to make gains at the enemy's expense?  See 2 Kings 13 and the king who struck the ground with his arrows, too timidly.  Paul told Timothy: God has not given us a spirit of timidity but of love, power and self-control.]

When these signs meet you, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you. 1 Sam 10.7