This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

We're in week two together of our look through first and second Samuel. This is
day four, chapter seven we're looking at today. Last few days we've looked at
this experience with the people and the ark and God's holiness and now we go
into another address of Samuel.

Remember Samuel who is the man with an open heart and he teaches us how to open
our heart to God. And he has something to say to the people in chapter seven
about how God wants to be at work in their lives, what God wants to do in their
lives. He has something to say to them about how to live the kind of life that
God has made for them.

Beginning in verse one, let me read for you verse one down through verse six in
first Samuel chapter seven. So the men of Curiath-Jeram came and took up the ark
of the Lord and they took it to Abinadab's house on the hill and they
consecrated Eliezer his son to guard the ark of the Lord. It was a long time,
twenty years in all, the ark remained at Curiath-Jeram and all the people of
Israel mourned and sought after the Lord.

And Samuel said to the whole house of Israel, "If you are returning to the Lord
with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the asheroths
and commit yourself to the Lord to serve him only and he will deliver you out of
the hand of the Philistines. " So the Israelites put away their bales and their
asheroths and they served the Lord only. And then Samuel said, "Assemble all the
people at Mizpah and I will intercede with the Lord for you.

" And when they assembled at Mizpah, they drew water and they poured it out
before the Lord and on that day they fasted and there they confessed, "We have
sinned against the Lord. " And Samuel was leader of Israel at Mizpah. This is
really a great moment in the history of Israel when the people turned back to
God under the leadership of Israel.

It's a great moment in Samuel's life as he leads the people to this moment of
repentance. It's an example of how to open your heart before God. Israel had
been living in defeat and in depression.

The whole nation, they all mourned, they all sought after the Lord, but they
weren't finding him and God did not desire for them to remain that way. If
you're living in defeat and depression, he doesn't desire for you to remain that
way. He shows them the opportunity for a renewed life.

God does not intend for you to remain defeated and depressed. So listen to this
opportunity for your life too. Three things he tells us to do in this address.

First, you make the decision to be renewed. If you need to be renewed, you make
the decision to be renewed. Three words express this decision.

Beginning in verse 3, "Samuel said to the whole house of Israel, 'If you're
returning to the Lord with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of all the
foreign gods and the asheroths and commit yourself to the Lord and serve him
only and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines. '" The three
words are return, remove, return, remove and direct. First you return.

You return with all your heart to the Lord. It's easy to get caught up, let your
heart get caught up in other priorities. Now some of those priorities may even
be good things, others might be bad things, yet the truth of an open heart is
that God's got to be first in my heart.

He's got to be at the center of my heart. So right now, I want to invite you as
we walk through this, let's do this with these people of so long ago. Return
right now.

Sometimes you have to do this many times even in one day. So return. Say, "God,
right now I'm returning to recognizing you're the center, not that thing, not
that thought, not that concern.

You're the center. " Return and then remove is the second word. Remove the
idols.

He says the idols and the Asherahs, Baals and Asherahs, those were the names of
the false gods that they followed. The truth of the matter is it's most likely
that when you renew a priority in your life, you're going to have to remove some
things from your life. When you renew a priority, you've got to remove some
things.

It might be a relationship. It might be a habit. It might be an addiction.

It might be a way of thinking about things. It might be an entertainment. It
might be a way you schedule your time.

I don't know what it is, but there's something that has to be removed. For the
Israelites, it was these false idols. For you, it might be one of those
relationships that needs to be changed or some habit that needs to be left
behind, something that needs to be removed, taken out, because it's drawing you
down.

It's taking you down, taking you away from God rather than towards God. It might
be a bad thing, even a sin. It might be an okay thing, a good thing, but it's
taking you away.

So there's something to be removed. You return, you remove, and then you direct.
He says, "I want you to direct your hearts, commit yourselves to the Lord.

" And this idea here of commit yourselves, it's the Hebrew word "kun. " It means
to set, to set your heart to be renewed, to direct your heart in a different
direction. Almost tell your heart, "This is what I'm going to do.

" You tell your heart, "Listen. Today, we're going to do what God wants us to
do. I know.

I know. We've been doing what we want to do. I'm telling you right now.

I'm directing you, heart. We're going to do what God wants us to do. " However
we happen to feel, that's what we're going to do today.

You direct your heart, and then you follow God's direction. We have an amazing
power to direct our hearts. God has given it to us.

Now in order to direct our hearts to follow him, we need his strength and his
power. This is not a matter of self-help thinking, but it's a matter of
recognizing that God has given you the power of decision, and today you and I
can decide to direct our hearts to serve him. You've got that opportunity today,
and it only comes one day at a time.

So the first thing you do is you return to the Lord. That's the first message
that Samuel had for the people that day, the most important message. A second
message when we think about returning to the Lord is don't be afraid to be
first.

When I look at Samuel this day, he was the sole voice for God in all of Israel,
and he was willing to sing a solo. He was willing to stand in front of everybody
and say, "This is what we need to do. " So how about you?

Are you afraid to be first? Are you always the one that has to follow somebody
else? When God wants to renew your life, many times you're going to have to be
first.

At work, at home, at school, are you waiting for somebody else to share their
faith? Are you waiting for somebody else to step out? It may never happen, but
if you'll step out, I'm not even saying it's what you say, it's what you do,
it's what you step away from, it's what you step into.

You may very well see, you will see that when you step out, that solo grows into
a duet and a quartet, and then to a choir of voices for God. It's scary. It's
scary to be the first to step out, but leaders are always the first to step out.

So you let God renew your heart, your relationships, your joy, and then you step
out into that, and others will follow. You will bless the lives of other people.
Don't be afraid to be first.

And there's a third thing that you and I learned from Samuel in this address
that day, and it's in verse 12. The third thing we learn is to place markers in
our lives that remind us of God's faithfulness. If I want to live a renewed life
before God, one of the things I can do in a practical way is place markers in my
life that remind me of God's faithfulness.

One of the most famous examples of that is here in verse 12. Samuel took a
stone, and he set it up between Mizpah and Shen, and he named it Ebenezer,
saying, "Thus far has the Lord helped us. " Ebenezer.

What does that mean? When we hear Ebenezer, most of us think of two things, or
at least one thing. We think of Ebenezer's Scrooge.

We think of English literature. And some of you that grew up in church, you
think of that old hymn, "Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I've come.
" Well, that's what Ebenezer means.

Ebenezer means God has helped us thus far. So they put up a stone, and when they
looked at that stone, it reminded us God has led us to this point. It was a
reminder of God's faithfulness.

You need to put those in your life. You need to put reminders of God's
faithfulness in your life. It might be a note that you write in your Bible.

"Thank you, God, for leading me thus far. " It might be a page you have in front
of your Bible with dates of what God has done. It might be a picture that you
place on your wall, some place where God worked in your life in a significant
way.

You take a picture of it, you blow it up, you put it on your wall, so when you
look at it, it's an Ebenezer moment for you. It's a marker of God's faithfulness
in your life. It's one of the ways that we stay renewed day by day by looking at
those markers.

The truth is, I need him to renew me every day. When we talk about renewal, this
is not a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Every day I need to be renewed in God's
purposes.

But the truth also is, there are times when I need a radical renewal in my life.
I've been sliding, I've been headed in the wrong direction, maybe for a long
time. And God needs to do a U-turn in my life.

He's willing to do that. I don't know where you are today, but I know that
wherever you stand, whether you need the daily renewal or the radical renewal,
God is there to renew you. Let's take a moment to pray together and just pray,
"Father, renew me.

Renew my heart. I reflect my heart towards you today. I remove from my life
those things that are keeping me away from you.

I want to not be afraid to be first. Let me be the first to step out to be
renewed. I want to put markers in my life that remind me of how you've renewed
me, because I want to live the renewed life.

You made me for new life, so I don't want to live an old life. I'm going to live
the new life that you made me for. So Father, I pray that you renew me today,
and I pray it in Jesus' name, amen.

" Tomorrow, the last day of this week, we're going to look and see what happens
when the people decide they want a king.