This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day four of week three of our look through first and
second Samuel. We're going to look at chapters 13 to 16 today, and they're
really about turning a failure into a success. The failure of Saul, the first
king of Israel, into the success of David, the second king of Israel, in
Samuel's life.

Now all the experts agree on this simple fact regarding failure and success.
Successful people aren't those who've never failed. We all fail.

They are people who have learned to turn failure into success. Teddy Roosevelt
said it this way, this famous quote, "Far better is it to dare mighty things to
win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those
poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the
gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. " Lowell said, "Not
failure, but low aim is a crime.

" And Edison famously said that he failed his way to success. He had a thousand
failures on his inventions, like the light bulb, until he found the success that
would make things work. That changes our whole way of thinking when we realize
it's not about me never failing.

I'm not talking about our sin here. I'm talking about the things in life that
don't work out like we want them to work out. What do I do to live beyond those?

Instead of trying not to fail, we need to begin to learn how to turn failure
into success. I can think of no better teacher than Samuel. Samuel anointed two
kings.

One, the first king of Israel, huge buildup of hope, but Saul was a colossal
failure. The second was a man named David, a king who became the benchmark of
success for all future kings. We can learn from Samuel.

These next two days, we're going to talk about six basic truths concerning how
God gives you and me direction for turning failures into successes. Beginning
with number one. What's the first thing you do?

Number one, you confront the failure. You will never turn failure into success
as long as you ignore your failures. First you have to confront the failure.

Listen beginning in verse 11 of chapter 13. We're going to begin in chapter 13
and skip all the way through to chapter 16 today and tomorrow as we look at this
breadth of what happened in Samuel's life. Chapter 13 verse 11, going back to
what we read a few days ago.

What have you done? Asked Samuel and Saul replied when I saw that the men were
scattering and that you did not come at the set time and that the Philistines
were assembling at Micmash, I thought now the Philistines will come down against
me at Gilgal and I've not sought the Lord's favor. So I felt compelled to offer
the burnt offering.

You acted foolishly, Samuel said. You have not kept the command of the Lord that
the Lord your God gave you. If you had, you would have established your kingdom
over Israel for all time, but now your kingdom will not endure.

The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and he appointed him leader of
his people because you've not kept the Lord's command. Saul failed. He tried to
be priest as well as king.

It was a prideful act. It was in direct violation of God's command and Samuel
did a wise thing. He confronted the failure.

How often do we pretend that failures aren't there, that they aren't real, that
somehow they'll just go away? In all the time that we're ignoring the problem,
the problem is growing. The problem is destroying.

Now Samuel teaches us two very important things, simple things about confronting
our failures here. Confront the problem immediately, confront the problem
clearly. He does both of those.

First he confronts it immediately. When it happened, he confronted it. The
longer you wait, the worse the problem is going to get and the harder it's going
to be for you to confront the problem.

So if you're going to be somebody who turns failures into successes, one of the
things you've got to do is confront problems more quickly and you've also got to
confront them more clearly. He was clear here. You have done wrong.

You have been foolish. The kingdom is going to be ripped from you. It's going to
be given to one who's after God's own heart.

He was very clear. Oftentimes when we confront problems, we don't know how to
confront. So we're so wishy washy.

People walk away from the meeting. Maybe you have a business meeting and say
we're having a problem, but you're not able to really say it very clearly.
People walk away and they have this thought, what just happened?

What was that about? Take the time to get your thoughts clear so you can be
honest and confront the problem clearly. You can be kind and clear at the same
time.

Confront it clearly, confront it immediately. First thing you've got to do is
confront the failure. Second truth we learned from Samuel is don't compromise
with the failure.

You confront it and then you don't compromise with it. That's chapter 15. 15
verse 20, back to what we looked at yesterday.

But I did obey the Lord, Saul said. I went on the mission. The Lord assigned me.

I completely destroyed the Amalekites. I brought back Agag their king. The
soldiers took the sheep and the cattle from the plunder, the best of what was
devoted to the Lord, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal.

But Samuel replied, "Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as
much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and
to heed is better than the fat of rams. " Saul, in essence, we looked at this
yesterday, but we didn't look at it from Samuel's perspective.

He gives Samuel an out. He says, "We did it for God. " And Samuel could have
said, "Well, maybe it's going to work with Saul.

Maybe it's going to be okay. Maybe he does have a good heart, but instead he
doesn't compromise with the failure. He doesn't allow it to happen.

" It's so tempting to compromise with failure, to try to take two or three or
five wrongs and make a right out of them. None of us like failure. None of us
want to admit a failure, so we want to compromise with it.

And Samuel had this perfect opportunity to compromise, to say, "Oh, it's okay.
Pat Saul on the back. Send him on his way.

" It had to be so tempting. He could have left all his problems behind,
supposedly, but he knew that Saul was insincere and he resisted the temptation
to compromise. Now, you learn from failure.

You grow from failure, but never try to build upon the failure. That's what it
means to not compromise. Failure makes a great teacher, but it's a rotten
foundation.

And he couldn't try to build on Saul any longer because Saul was a rotten
foundation. So he couldn't compromise with the failure. What I'm saying is,
don't waste your life on a pride-filled attempt to prove that your failures
really don't exist.

Confront them and then don't compromise with them. Move on to what God has for
you next. That's the third thing that we learn from Samuel.

It's in chapter 16, verse 1. The third thing we learn is to stop allowing grief
over your failure to control you. Now, you might have some kind of grief, some
kind of sorrow over that failure the rest of your life, but you stop allowing
the grief over that failure to control your life.

Listen to what happens in chapter 16, verse 1. The Lord said to Samuel, "How
long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him as king over Israel?
Fill your horn with oil and be on your way.

I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I have chosen one of his sons to be
king. " Samuel was sad.

He was mourning that the king that had been chosen was not the king that the
people could follow. And God comes to Samuel in prayer and he says to him, "Stop
allowing this grief to control your life. Stop allowing it to control your life.

Stand up, fill your horn with oil, the anointing oil for a new king. Get ready
for the next thing I want to do in your life and step out into it. " Listen, it
hurts to fail.

Anyone who says it doesn't has never faced failure. And that hurt, that loss, it
makes us grieve. And you and I, we have to watch out.

That grief, it can grab ahold of you, it can control you for the rest of your
life. That was God's warning to Samuel in chapter 16, verse 1. There's a time to
leave the grief behind, to move on ahead in spite of the hurt.

So my question is, are you allowing a grief over a failure to control your life?
You failed and now you've said, "I'm never, ever going to try that again. " You
failed in school.

Never going to try that again. You failed in a marriage. I'm never going to try
that again.

You failed at a job. You failed at speaking in front of people or failed as a
parent. I'm never going to step into that again.

Truth of the matter is, we all stumble. James says we all stumble in many ways,
talking about tongue being the worst. I failed at the words I've said.

Chuck Swindoll says, "God wants to use you stumbling at all, but he won't do it
if he refused to get up. " So you stop grieving over that failure and you get up
because God still has a purpose for your life. Would you pray with me?

Father, instead of being controlled by our failures or compromising with our
failures, help us to be people who confront those failures and then begin to
look for what you want to do next. Because you didn't save us for our lives to
be marked by failure. You saved us for our lives to be marked by faithfulness,
by love, by following.

Help us to follow you, even through the failures. Help us to follow you and
realize that you'll be there with us. We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to look at three more lessons from Samuel about how to
turn failure into success.