Zach Peters' Podcast
A place for sermons, reflections, and general pondering on life and stuff.
Zach Peters' Podcast
1 Samuel 3 Part 3 (Generations)
God's plan transcends generational failures to accomplish His purposes, working through broken systems to raise up faithful leaders when hope seems lost.
• Looking at 1 Samuel 3, we see God's word coming to Samuel in a time when "the word of the Lord was rare"
• God's plan works through three generations in this story: Eli, his corrupt sons, and young Samuel
• The book of Judges shows a recurring pattern of generational spiritual decline followed by God's intervention
• Churches demonstrate their belief in generational hope through how they allocate resources to children and youth
• Practical application means shifting focus from "me and now" to "we and tomorrow"
• Even in seemingly bleak cultural moments, God is still raising up "Samuels" for the next generation
• The Holy Spirit isn't limited by cultural barriers, broken families, or generational failures
• Jesus arrived after many cycles of Israel's spiritual ups and downs to fulfill God's ultimate redemptive plan
• Maintaining hope in future generations doesn't mean ignoring problems but believing God works through them
• Every act of faithfulness might nurture the next spiritual leader who will bring God's word to their generation
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All right. 1 Samuel 3 says this We've read this three weeks in a row now. Some of you have missed it, so let's read it again Now. The boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli, and the word of the Lord was rare in those days, for there was no frequent visions. At the time, eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called Samuel and he said here I am was. Then the Lord called Samuel and he said here I am, here I am. And he ran to Eli and said oh goodness gracious, I'm going back and forth here. Let's do this again. And he ran to Eli and said here I am, for you called me, but he said I did not call Lie down again. So he went and lay down again and the Lord called again Samuel. And Samuel arose and went to Eli and said here I am, for you called me, but he said I did not call my son. Lie down again Now.
Speaker 1:Samuel did not yet know the Lord and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time and he arose and went to Eli and said here I am for you called me. And then Eli perceived finally that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore, eli said to Samuel Go lie down and if he calls you, you shall say Speak, Lord, for your servant hears. So Samuel went and lay down in his place and the Lord came and stood calling at other times, samuel, samuel and Samuel said Speak, for your servant hears. I'm not going to read the rest of it, we've read it, but it goes on and basically God tells Samuel that because of Eli's sins and the sins of his sons, he's going to destroy the house of Eli. And Samuel is given this word of the Lord, which is rare in these days. It was an uncomfortable word. And basically the next morning, when they're up and awake, samuel is hiding from Eli, doesn't want to deal with Eli, and basically Eli says listen, you got to tell me what God said to you. You have to, and the same thing that he said to you. Let it happen to you if you don't tell me what he said. And so of course he gives the bad news to Eli. Eli says, okay, let the Lord's will be done. And then he goes on to show that Samuel grew more and more in the Lord every day and that God was faithful to him and he was a prophet, he was a judge, and we know that eventually he would be a kingmaker.
Speaker 1:And so, again, this is week three of looking at the Scripture, and week one was about the necessity of God's Word in your life. You've got to have God's Word in your life One way or another. We have to have God's Word in your life. You've got to have God's Word in your life One way or another. We have to have God's Word to be sustained right. If you don't have God's Word, don't be surprised when things start falling apart in your life or in a given society.
Speaker 1:Week two last week was about not just the Word of God, but hearing the Word of God and doing something with it and trying to understand a little bit about that process, because it's a process. It's a process to read a scripture and then to understand that you need that scripture, but then to understand that scripture and how it might apply to your life, and then not only to understand how you should use it. Then to go do it and, to be honest with you, it's the same struggle that we have in school to learn an equation, right, we got to learn an equation, then we got to sort of memorize that equation, but really we got to put that equation into practice. Sometimes, and the biggest problem for me is that sometimes I didn't understand why I had to figure out A plus B equals C, right? So same thing in church sometimes. Sometimes it's just hard to take God's word to process it and then to figure out how that might work in our lives.
Speaker 1:This week I simply want to point out that God is not limited by us in accomplishing his goals. He's not limited by us in accomplishing his goals. His plan transcends failures, it transcends generations. Everyone say generations, generations.
Speaker 1:You have three generations in this scripture, represented actively and passively. You've got Eli, who is an old man. He represents one generation, the oldest generation. You have Eli's sons, hophni and Phinehas. They represent another generation. And then, of course, we have Samuel, who represents the younger generation. And so Eli, one generation. He lives relatively a faithful life to God. His sin, his problem, was not keeping that faithfulness in his family, not passing that faithfulness on to his family. And then, of course, we have Eli, or we have Phineas, phineas and Ferb I did it again, just like last week, yeah, I know every time. Anyways, hophnii and Phineas, not Phineas and Ferb. Hophnii and Phineas. And because Eli failed to pass on the faithfulness of God to them and failed to correct them and help them, they're living however they want to live, so they're a lost generation.
Speaker 1:And then, at the other side of the lost generation, we have this little boy in Samuel, and basically God reaches in through these broken generations and lifts up another generation to do his work and to do his will, and I think it's a beautiful thing. That's what we're focusing on today, on today. In his grace, in his sovereignty, in his mercy, god can work through the failures of a people, of a person, of a generation, two generations, three generations and, through the Holy Spirit, still accomplish what he wants to accomplish. In people's lives, the generations matter, the next generation matters, and I know I'm preaching to the choir right now. We all got kids in here, so this is in our head right now.
Speaker 1:I think, to get to where I want to be with the scripture today, we actually got to look back to another book of the Bible that precedes 1 and 2. Samuel called the book of Judges. The book of Judges, you've probably heard of it. It's got Samuel or not. It's got Samson in it. Samson's in the book of Judges, gideon's in the book of Judges.
Speaker 1:And in the book of Judges we see a pattern of generations. Let me read this this is after the death of Joshua, who was the leader of Israel, after Moses and the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and they served the Ba. Not good right. Joshua is dead and no sooner than Joshua and his generation pass away and go away that the next generations fail to connect to God. There's a failure, a generational failure, and it leads them to a position where they are doing things they're not supposed to do and it provokes the anger of the Lord. And of course, the Old Testament is slightly different than the New Testament, but basically what we're seeing here is that God's about to remove his hand of protection on Israel because, well, frankly, they're not living life, they're connected to him anymore. So, generational failure.
Speaker 1:And then we get a couple of verses later, judges 3, verse 9, and we get this common wording that we get over and over again in Judges. So there's a failure, a generational failure, and then often what happens at the worst part of the generational failure and the consequences of the generational failure. It says this but when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel who saved them. It's a process. There's a generational failure, things go wrong. They cry out. God is gracious to save them and give them a savior who steps in and lifts them up.
Speaker 1:They call them judges that's why this book is called Judges, but it's not judges like we think of it. They're family leaders, clan leaders, military leaders, spiritual leaders that not only deliver Israel and the different tribes of Israel from enemies but also bring back that faithfulness to God in the relationship. But then what we see over and over again in Judges, over the scope of Judges, is that every time there's a Savior, there's a season of blessing, a season of connection to God, and as soon as that judge passes away, generation passes and they're back in the same thing, and so it's up and down, up and down, up and down. Close to God, not close to God. Close to God, not close to God Over and over and over again. Something gets lost in translation between the generations. In fact, what we have at the beginning of Samuel, the book of Samuel 1 and 2, samuel is basically Israel living through another one of those generational downturns in their relational closeness to God. Samuel is the last judge that God raises up for the people of Israel who are crying out for help. He's the last judge. Then, of course, israel doesn't want a judge anymore, they want a king. And we get Saul and we get David and all of that.
Speaker 1:Getting back to our little chapter here, in some small way Samuel represents the same thing that Jesus would represent to us thousands of years later Not just for Israel, though, for all of humanity A Savior that brings us up out of the pit, out of the relational mess, out of the lack of closeness to God. Jesus arrives to be our Savior. We'll talk about this a little bit more, but basically, as we look at the failures of these generations and the up-and-down pattern in these generations, we're getting a glimpse of God's plan for all of humanity, not just Israel, but, all that being said, not just Israel, but all that being said, god has a plan, god has a vision, god has a hope, always for the next generation. There's always hope in the next generation, and that matters for a lot of different reasons we'll talk about here in a second. It's not that God wants one particular generation to fail. It's not like he wants a generation to do bad. It's not that he wants to have to use the next generation. No, it's simply.
Speaker 1:As far as humanity works, god's plan and his sovereignty is not limited to accomplishing what he needs to accomplish in any one given generation. He didn't need our grandfathers to do something he hoped they would. He hoped that our forefathers to do something he hoped they would. He hoped that our forefathers would do the right thing. But he doesn't have to have them do that, because he's more than that. His plan's more than that. There's an interplay between God's sovereignty, which means that God's will will be done. That's what sovereignty means. What God wants to happen will happen. There's an interplay between that and the fact that he has given us freedom of choice, which means that sometimes a generation, a people, a person, a family will choose to do the right thing and sometimes they won't. And just because a generation fails to do the right thing doesn't mean that God's plan is hijacked and messed up. It just means that there's going to be a time when he steps in and does something spectacular. There's broken generations in this chapter we've been reading and God reaches into a different generation and brings out hope when there shouldn't have been any hope. God's not limited.
Speaker 1:I often see this concept. It's a patriotic sort of concept, in particular in the United States sort of concept, in particular in the United States, where every generation who is born in the United States is obligated to refight for their freedom, to secure it. You ever heard that before? That each generation has an obligation to fight for their freedom? You can't rest on your laurels. You've got to wake up and understand and take advantage of the blessing you've been given of freedom and of liberty. You've got to do something with it and take advantage of the blessing you've been given of freedom and of liberty. You've got to do something with it and keep it. It won't stay the same, it will fade away if we don't do something with it. I think that's wisdom, it's patriotic, it's political we're talking about nation stuff here but I think it's true.
Speaker 1:And if that's true, I think it's even more true that when we wake up and whenever we are born, and we happen to be born with the opportunity at the blessing of salvation. Each new generation has an obligation to be connected to that on their own. You can be born into a Christian family, you can be born into a family that does all the right things, spiritually speaking. But each generation afterwards has an obligation to pick that burden up on their own Generational process. And God's plan is just bigger than failures. It's bigger, but we all have an individual opportunity and choice to make to pick up the blessings of God in our life.
Speaker 1:We also do this human thing of getting very limited and locked into a tiny scope of vision. We get fixated on one specific piece of time in our existence. It's difficult for us to think beyond our lifespan or the lifespan of our children. Can you really start thinking about what our great-grandchildren are going to be doing right now? You might have some sort of concept or idea, but, to be honest with you, we don't have the mental capacity to really think that far in advance. And yet, clearly, when we're talking about God and His plan, his plan spans multiple generations. It's a multi-generational plan.
Speaker 1:Right, the disciples were not the end of God's plan. That was one generation. The next generation was a part of God's plan. We can't get fixated on our one generation. We can't get fixated on this one speck in time that we exist. God's plan keeps going. The next generation always matter.
Speaker 1:We're roughly 2,000 years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, right here right now, and we can't know what's going to happen next. We can't know. He gives us some glimpses, he gives us some things to look out for, but the fact of the matter is, the disciples thought that, you know, all of God's plan was going to be fulfilled in their lifetime, but it didn't, clearly. And so we don't know what God wants to do today. We don't know what God wants to happen tomorrow, other than some vague plans that he gives us, let alone what God's plan is for the next 200, 300, 400, 500 years, if he tarries. So we don't know. We can't know.
Speaker 1:As a matter of fact, scripture says no man can know. You can't guess it, you can't postulate. You can look at the signs of the times, but we're always going to be wrong, because no man can know. Can't, which means? Which means we've got to have a different perspective. Maybe it freaks you out that you can't know. Maybe it freaks you out that you don't know the plan. Maybe it freaks you out that, well, maybe we've got 2,000 more years of this life and humanity thing before God comes back. Maybe that freaks you out.
Speaker 1:It doesn't really matter to me, to be honest, it doesn't. Just because one generation fails to uphold biblical standards of holiness and living for that purpose, just because there's several generations of darkness, doesn't mean that God doesn't have a plan. It doesn't mean that God's still not working and moving. It doesn't mean that the story is over. Just because a church building is empty now doesn't mean that the church building will be empty tomorrow. Just because it seems tough right now to live a righteous and holy lifestyle doesn't mean his church is going to die. God is bigger than our concept of time. He's bigger than the things we see as problems. He's bigger than our failures, big and small. He's bigger than generational failures. He's bigger than that. He's bigger than all of the mess that we think is going to end the United States or end the world, or head to this or head to that.
Speaker 1:I get it. I grew up in it. I grew up in that. I grew up looking for the rapture every single day, and I still do. I expect the rapture to happen every single day. I hope for it. It's a good thing, it's not a negative thing. To be with God is going to be a brilliant, marvelous, magnificent thing, but that's just a piece of the puzzle of our relationship with Christ. The fact of the matter is no man knows, no man can know. That means we got to look at the future with hope. We got to look at the generations behind us that seem broken and still know that just like God can reach into the broken generations of, just like God can reach into the broken generations of Israel, he can reach into the broken generations behind us. That seems very bleak and raise up some Samuels. That's why the scripture matters to me so much, because we get so fixated and focused on a small point of time. That is our existence, that is our life, and God's plan is bigger than that existence. That is our life and God's plan is bigger than that. Yes, of course, the story of God is working towards its perfect fulfillment in creation. It's happening. It's happening all around us.
Speaker 1:There are signs. Okay, I'm not saying there aren't signs. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be aware of things that are happening around us. I'm not saying that, but we might see a sign and conclude that, well, time is nigh. But we're probably wrong.
Speaker 1:The disciples thought the time was nigh when they were living. And why wouldn't they? They were all dying, they were all being killed. Right? You don't think that the Greeks and Romans have problems with homosexuality? They did. You don't think that they were dragging people into arenas and their spectator sport wasn't just as violent as football or rugby? They were watching people die. That was their entertainment, and somehow we think that it's worse right now and in some ways, maybe it is. But do you understand that 30,000, 40,000 people gathered in the Coliseum and watched lions eat Christians? Okay, so I would say that if I'm living through that moment, I would think there's my sign, like I got to go. God, this can't last much longer.
Speaker 1:I think of Christians who lived through World War I and the Spanish flu, and we're talking about I can't remember the exact number, but we're talking about 40 million to 50 million people that died. We're talking about entire communities disappearing off the face of the earth, and I think about the Christians living through that time. What must they be thinking in that moment? They have the same scripture, same prophecies we have. I think about the people living through the Russian Revolution and people, just peasants. They're just sort of trying to do the best thing and all of a sudden these communists come in and say that you're loyal to the czar and so I'm going to drag away all your entire family, take you to a Siberian work camp and you're going to die. I think about the people who lived through the communist revolution of China. We're talking about 20 million people who ended up dying in the communist revolution. You think about these staggering numbers.
Speaker 1:You think about the bubonic plague back in the Middle Ages, and you think about entire communities being wiped off the face of the earth and they're being. You know, if a community had 200 people in the village and the bubonic plague came in, you might be left over with 25 people. Right, that must have seemed like the end of the world. But there's always hope. If you're still here and God's not doing, god's not come back yet. Well, that must mean well, there's still a plan. I got work to do. There is a generational plan. A generational plan.
Speaker 1:The next generation matters. Just because we think it's bad right now doesn't mean we can give up, doesn't mean that we can't keep moving forward doesn't mean we can't prepare for what's next. Israel was on the verge of catastrophe. There was another series, another season of generational failures to follow God. And yet God still uses a faithful family to birth forth this miracle of Samuel, who would do mighty things for the people of Israel. But it was birthed out of the darkest moment in Israel's existence.
Speaker 1:This generational hope, this generational focus, we've got to get it on the inside of us. We've got to think of it practically, how it might mean in our life. And again, it doesn't mean that God might not come back in the next five seconds. Okay, he might come on our way home. The Trump may sound and we may man, that might be it. Okay, that's great, I want it, I do, and I think the world's plenty bad enough for him to do it, but we don't know. So we got to get this generational hope inside our hearts and inside our minds.
Speaker 1:What does this mean practically for us? Practically For church? This might practically mean and this doesn't 100% apply to us yet, but it might mean that the way that a church spends its resources, its time and its money tells me how they feel about the potential of the next generation. What do I mean by that? Are they spending money on kids? Are they spending money on the teenagers? Are they making it possible for them to have the resources they need to have a good experience in church? Are the leaders, people like Denise and other people in here who have volunteered throughout their life to serve the next generation? Are we offering them the time and the resources and the money to make them excellent in their ability to communicate the gospel to the next generation, because the next generation also has the same plan that we have in this generation. Are we doing that? So, from a practical standpoint, is a church funneling resources into the next generation? If we've got the next generation mentality in our heart, in our mind, if we've got that hope in our mind, then that means we've got to change the way we do some things.
Speaker 1:I've got a story. I was made aware of this story in a very, very close and personal nature, but there was a church and compared to us it was a decent-sized church, but in the grand scheme of things there's about 150 people in the church smaller church, 200 people on Easter or something like that, and on Wednesdays they had basically youth group and Bible study, like a lot of churches in the South do. And so what happened is there was a building, a sanctuary, that was a little bit larger than this room, and then there was a fellowship hall area in another building that was much smaller than this room, and so on Wednesdays, the adults would meet for Bible study and the teens would meet for their youth group, their worship, their sermons and all of that stuff. And what would happen is that over time, for whatever reason, that the adults they started dwindling, but the youth group started expanding and expanding and expanding to the point where they were having 30 to 50 kids every single week in this small church and there was like five or seven adults in the main sanctuary. So, if we're talking about using our resources appropriately and understanding the importance of the hope of the generations and the next generations, in my opinion what should have happened is that the adults should have volunteered the sanctuary space and they should have volunteered the sanctuary space and they should have taken the smaller space and given the youth the ability to expand into a bigger space. All right, it's not a big deal, it's not like that was a sin not to do that, but it was a mindset issue. I saw it was a. It was a, and it's not that the adults didn't deserve a good space, it's not that they didn't deserve good quality experience when they came to church, but there had to be a focus on the next generation, where they recognized they had a chance to do something for the next generation in their community by letting them expand into the space that they needed. Because I'm going to tell you from experience, that space was packed, it was very packed, it was very tight for the youth and sometimes it was uncomfortable and sometimes it was really smelly and sometimes it was very packed. It was very tight for the youth and sometimes it was uncomfortable and sometimes it was really smelly and sometimes it was very distracting because everyone was packed into this tiny little space. That's a practical example of what a church can do when they change their mindset to have a focus on the generations.
Speaker 1:What it might look like for families and for individuals to have this generational hope? Well, first and foremost, I think that it would mean growing our focus from me and now to we and tomorrow. Okay, we have to fight the urge to think about problems, to think about life, to plan, to walk through life with this little circle that's only around us and right now, and thankfully, in here again preaching to the choir. We are all because we got you got a man, you've got a handful of grandchildren now, right, we all got kids in here. We are all practiced in thinking about someone other than ourselves, and so what this generational hope means is that we take that attitude and we just expand it not just to our family but to other families, and recognize the importance of what God can do in the next generation. Even though it might seem bleak, it might mean that we support families and we equip parents with tools to lead their children.
Speaker 1:Moment of honesty, I don't know about you. When I'm thinking about how to raise a kid, I feel like I'm starting from scratch every morning, like how am I supposed to do this? Like what's going on? Obviously, I had parents and they did a lot of right things. They did plenty of wrong things. You can learn from that. I've got great parent-in-laws. You can learn from them. But at the end of the day, it's tough. It's tough to feel like you're just sort of winging it as you go along. So maybe as a church, one of the goals that we should do because we are a generational church, a hopeful church in the next generation, is that we find ways to support one another so that we don't feel alone, so that we're not just making stuff up and I'm not trying to give anyone parenting advice, because, well you know, I'm figuring out my own but at least maybe we come to a space where we throw out ideas.
Speaker 1:Another thing that it might mean practically for our lives is that we avoid senses of impending doom, because all we see behind us in the younger generations is brokenness and mess and not great. We see the generation behind us. Well, we didn't do things that way when I was that age Blah, blah, blah. Like I do it, my parents did it, my grandparents did it. We have a tendency to always look behind us and think, well, they're not getting it right. Okay, and let me go tell you sometimes that's very, very true.
Speaker 1:As a youth pastor, I'm going to tell you, over the past 80 years there have been some negative seismic shifts in how people do life. I get it, it's true. I'm not saying we ignore that, but what I am saying is if God can raise up a Samuel out of the brokenness of generations, then surely he's still in the business of raising up people even when we don't expect they can be raised up. If we're looking at a broken generation of people who are always on their phone and never outside and they can't talk to adults and they don't go on dates, they're too afraid to drive, and we think, well, it's all lost. Well then, how did God do this with Samuel? There's always going to be a chance where the Holy Spirit steps in to bleak moments, bleak generations, and lifts up Samuel's. That lifts up an entire generation. Right, we just got to have more hope. We're not sticking our head in the sand to the problems that exist, but we hold out hope for and we pray for and believe that as long as we're still here, as long as God is still who he says he is, as long as we are not raptured, as long as we are not dead, then there is still a purpose for the next generation, no matter how bleak it looks and it looks bleak sometimes. It looks bleak sometimes. I know how bleak it seems. I feel the pressure, I see the mess. I sense it as a pastor, I sense it as a father. I worry about the future for my kids.
Speaker 1:I was a youth pastor for a good while and I saw the generations after mine. I saw them and how they shifted dangerously and how they saw the world and how they do things. I get it. I saw firsthand that kids couldn't even look you in the eye. I saw firsthand that they were more concerned about something on their phone than they were about anything else. I saw where a lot of kids were too afraid, too full of anxiety, too afraid to take responsibility to go get their license to drive. I saw it firsthand. I saw the things that they were addicted to on their phones. I saw the stuff that they saw. They told me that they were addicted to things that I can't imagine dealing with. Whenever I was their age. Do you understand what they were seeing on TikTok, what they were seeing on social media? What they were seeing in their phone, in their pocket, was disgusting filth that a lot of us can't even really imagine seeing.
Speaker 1:Whenever we were 13, 14, 15 years old, I've seen the darkness of the next generation. I've seen it. I've seen the brokenness, but none of that matters compared to the power of God. None of that matters to the power, the power of the Holy Spirit, to step into their lives in a dark generation and lift them up, not just for their own sake, but for the sake of an entire generation. There are Samuels out there.
Speaker 1:It's not just about our generation, it's not just about us. We have got to be conduits conduits for what God wants to do with the next generation. His story's not done yet. Until it's done, we can't keep looking for the end whenever the end's not here yet and we can't know. We've got a job to do, be a part of the process.
Speaker 1:I just know right now, somewhere in a Muslim country or a Hindu country, and there is a young man there, a young lady there, and it's bleak and it's dark because they have no hope of hearing the gospel, they have no hope of succeeding in a relationship with God because of the cultural circumstances surrounding them. But I know right now the Holy Spirit is moving in their life because God is not limited by our cultural situations. He's not limited by generational failures. He's not limited by the dark times that we go through. He's not limited by broken generation after broken generation after broken generation. He's not limited. The Holy Spirit is moving even right now to do something that we can't even imagine he's raising up Samuels.
Speaker 1:Have hope, believe. It's not all doom and gloom. It is tough out there. It is difficult out there. There are tough seasons for some people around us. Maybe there's tough seasons before. We've all lived through elections that we didn't want to go a certain way, but we're still standing. We've all had moments where it was tough and we're still standing. God's plan supersedes our problems. It supersedes our issues. It supersedes the generational problems, societal problems of any season. Let the Holy Spirit work and move. Believe for it, hope for it, pray for it. Don't rest on your laurels, believe. Believe that God can do something spectacular.
Speaker 1:Jesus showing up on the scene in Israel. He shows up. He's not showing up to a brand new Israel. He's showing up with a country that's got 4,000 years, 5,000 years of history with God. He's got 5,000 years of prophecy, 5,000 years of the judges, 5,000 years of kings, 5,000 years of the law, 5,000 years of them and their cycle of going up and down, up and down. He's aware of it all. He's aware of it all and he shows up and he fulfills all the promises that Israel had on their shoulders. But also more than that, above and beyond that, he introduces to all of humanity the ability to be reconnected to God. Because, even though Israel was the one having this up and down process, the rest of existence and the rest of the world. They were stuck in the dark ages and Jesus shows up.
Speaker 1:And I say all of this, I point all of this out because if we're just looking as sort of spectators at the cycle of judges and we're looking at the cycle of good kings and bad kings, and we're looking at the generations of failures and generations of good times and ultimately Israel ends up destroyed and they end up a shell of what they were supposed to be devastated, maybe it's a little disappointing to look at them that way. Maybe it's a little disappointing, especially if you're Jewish, to look back on that journey and think, well, this is what we have now after all of this, this special relationship with God, and this is where we are, this is what we got. And even if you're just trying to study and just be reflective of a people group dealing and walking with God, it can be disappointing. It can be disappointing, but God always knew the plan was for more than one people group. It was for all of existence and God always understood that the law and the prophets were not going to be enough, even for the most devout Jewish people, it was not going to be enough to break the cycle of broken generations in their life. And Jesus shows up and he finally is the Savior that not just the Jewish people needed but everybody needed, so that we could have the law in our heart, that we could be our own temple.
Speaker 1:The cycle of judges, the cycle of good kings, bad kings, is sort of a living parable about the brokenness of humanity. Because the reality is we all live through seasons where it feels like we're going up and down with God Always. But there's always hope. There's always hope For your life personally. If you're in a season where it feels like you are in a valley, there's always hope. And if you're in a season where you're not in a valley, you don't have to go in that valley, you don't have to go up and down. You can have a steadfast one. Have a steadfast one. Scripture says it's like going from glory to glory, mountaintop to mountaintop. You're skipping the valleys and you're just going from place to place to place. We have that available to us and here's the beautiful thing about that salvation and that goodness that God offers us, that salvation, that grace. It can find a way in the bleakest of circumstances, individually, but also generationally speaking.
Speaker 1:I don't know. It's just easy to get discouraged. Y'all know what I'm talking about. It's easy to see the news and be discouraged. It's easy to see how things go. It's easy to be discouraged and think God, how can this keep on going? How can we keep moving this way?
Speaker 1:But I'm sure the disciples thought that. I'm sure Paul thought that. I'm sure the pastors and the Christians in World War I thought that and World War II thought that. I'm sure of it God's still got a plan, god is still full of hope and God is still raising up Samuels. And I just want to be a part and involved in that process in my life. Does that make sense? Let's pray, and I just want to be a part and involved in that process in my life. Does that make sense? Let's pray.
Speaker 1:Heavenly Father, we love you, we thank you and Lord, first and foremost, god, I am thankful and I look forward to the day when I'm reunited with you, god, in death or in rapture. Lord, I look forward to it, I'm excited about it. It's a good thing, it's a great thing, it's a hopeful thing, it's a happy thing, it's a joyful thing. You're going to make a new heaven and new earth and new creation. It's going to be, lord, it's just going to. Any good moment that we have in our life is going to be multiplied. We just can't even imagine what it's going to be like, god. It's going to be so great.
Speaker 1:But, god, I pray that we wouldn't be so focused on that that we work ourselves into.
Speaker 1:I don't know pain and fear and anxiety about the world that we live in. I pray that we would have generational hope, a hope that supersedes a season of failure, a hope that supersedes a people group living however they want to live, a group that supersedes cultural problems, societal problems, a hope that can reach into the bleakest situations and raise up Samuels to bring hope and joy and peace to the people around us. I pray that we would be conduits and that we would let ourselves be used in this process, that we would not be overcome with dread or with fear, but that we would just walk with joy and peace, walk with purpose, walk knowing that there's an opportunity that something we say and something we do, some act of service, some kind word, some prayer, some invitation, might change a life, that might change a generation. Lord, we love you. We thank you for everything that you do and let's pray that we would submit ourselves to you and to your will and to your purpose. In Jesus' name, we pray and we all say Amen.