This transcript was generated automatically and may contain minor errors.

Amen and amen. Have you ever had the experience, you probably have like me, where someone you would normally never listen to actually, for once, has something legitimate to say. They say a broken clock is right twice a day, but we all know people that we wouldn't trust to be right in anything they say. But every once in a while, there are exceptions. A person with no experience might actually have something insightful to say because of their naivete.

They see something that nobody else saw. Maybe it's the person with the messed up life, and they might actually have some good advice because they know what not to do. Or maybe it's that person with all the conspiracy theories. Thanksgiving's coming up. There's probably gonna be one of those people at Thanksgiving, and they might actually be on to something for once in their life.

And those are all exceptions to the rule, of course, where knowledge and wisdom and insight come from unlikely sources. But the most unlikely source of wisdom and insight in all the bible perhaps is the witch at En Dor in 1 Samuel 28. Do you have your bible with you? Would you take it out, and turn to 1 Samuel 28? I've had a few people ask me what I was gonna preach on this Sunday, and when I told them the witch at En Dor, all of them kinda had the same reaction.

What what are we talking about here in 1 Samuel 28? The witch, the medium that Saul goes to. It's a it's a wild story. And throughout the course of history, witches aren't someone you should listen to, certainly not for messages from God. But here is one exception in this wild account found in 1 Samuel 28.

So I would like us to consider this account this morning and especially the idea of Saul and Samuel and asking of God. Will you read it with me beginning in 1 Samuel 28:3? Israel and the armies of Saul are going to war against the Philistines, and this is what happens in verse three of 1 Samuel 28. Now Samuel had died, and all Israel had lamented him and buried him in Ramah in his own city. And Saul had put the mediums and the spiritualists out of the land.

All of this is just background material that's important for the story later on. Then the Philistines gathered together and came and encamped at Shunem. So Saul gathered all Israel together, and they encamped at Gilboa. And when Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly. Now if he is seeing them from his encampment at Gilboa, that must have been a huge army to be able to see what it was that was coming against him.

And so he was greatly afraid, and he's trembling. And Saul inquired of the Lord. Verse 6. When he did, the Lord did not answer him either by, three things, dreams or by Urim, which have been through the priests, or by the prophets. Saul said to his servants, find me a woman who is a medium that I may go to her and inquire of her.

And his servant said to him, in fact, there is a woman who is a medium. Maybe your translation says which, a medium at En Dor. So Saul disguised himself and put on other clothes, and he went and two men went with him. And they came to the woman by night, and he said, please conduct a seance for me and bring up for me the one I shall name to you. And the woman said to him, look.

You know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the spiritualists from the land. Why do you lay a snare for my life to cause me to die? And Saul swore to her swore to her by the Lord saying, as the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing. Then the woman said, whom shall I bring up for you? And he said, bring up Samuel for me.

And women... When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice. And this particular phrase in the Old Testament implies surprise and fear from her. She goes, ah, because she sees Samuel. Why have you deceived me?

She says to Saul. For you are Saul. And the king said to her, do not be afraid. What do you see? And the woman said to Saul, I saw a spirit ascending out of the earth.

So he said to her, what is its form? And she said, an old man is coming up, and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground and bowed down. Now Samuel said to Saul, why have you disturbed me by bringing me up? And Saul answered, I am deeply distressed for the Philistines make war against me, and God has departed from me and does not answer me anymore, either by prophets nor by dreams.

Therefore, I have called you that you may reveal to me what I should do. Then Samuel said, so why do you ask me? Seeing the Lord has departed from you and has become your enemy, and the Lord has done for himself as he spoke by me, that is in the past what Samuel had already told him when he was still alive, for the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor David because you did not obey the voice of the Lord nor execute his fierce wrath upon Amalek. Therefore, the Lord has done this thing to you this day. Moreover, the Lord will also deliver Israel with you into the hand of the Philistines, and tomorrow, you and your sons will be with me.

The Lord will also deliver the army of Israel into the hand of the Philistines. Verse 20. Immediately, Saul fell full length on the ground, and he was dreadfully afraid because of the words of Samuel, and there was no strength in him for he had eaten no food all day or all night. I mean, that's a wild story, isn't it? And we think, why is this where we find the account before the death of Saul?

I was reading some comments on this passage as I was preparing over the last number of weeks, and one of the comments said, the really interesting question is whether it was actually Samuel who appeared to him or not. And to me, that's not an interesting question at all. It seems super clear that Samuel did, in fact, appear to him. And we know that because the text, the narrator, who knows all the things behind the scenes, calls him Samuel and continues to call him Samuel throughout the text. Secondly, his prophecy comes true.

And in the Old Testament, the primary test of a true prophet does what they say come to pass. And then number three, the witch herself is surprised and frightened when she sees Samuel because they didn't expect to actually see Samuel, and yet here he is. Yes. Saul sees Samuel. He really sees a spirit, a vision of Samuel coming up brought by this witch at En Dor.

But the really interesting question is why God allowed Samuel to appear and what it should teach us, what this text teaches us about how we ask of God or not and how God chooses to answer or not. And to really, I think, get the full impact of what we find in this text, there are three points of context that I want us to see as we think about the words that we have just read. The first thing that I want us to see is that mediums were to be put to death under the old law. That's found in Leviticus 20. And in verse 27, it says, all of this practicing soothsaying and witches and mediums and sorcery, all of that was forbidden and was punished by stoning.

And furthermore, as we read, Saul himself had driven out all of the spiritualists, the wizards, and witches from the land like he should have. But in hypocrisy, he himself turns to such practices. The witch, she responds with trepidation. She says, you know the law. I'm not looking to die today.

And yet Saul promises the very opposite of what he had done before. In driving them out of the land, now he himself says, I'm gonna use a medium to talk to Samuel. And he promises he will protect her instead of punishing her for her witchcraft, and he swears... Amazingly, he swears by the lord himself in offering this protection to the one who should have died under the law. Well, the lord fulfills his promise found earlier in Leviticus 20:6 that says, and the person who turns to mediums and spirits to prostrate himself...

To prostitute himself with them, I will set my face against that person and cut him off from the people. Saul is bringing about his condemnation by doing what he's turning to thinking it's gonna bring about his salvation. God will rightly cut him off from the land. In fact, first Chronicles lists this account as one of the reasons why Saul's kingdom was taken away from him. And when we compare first and second Samuel, first and second Kings with first and second Chronicles, they're written at different times.

They're written for different purposes, but they have a lot of overlapping stories. And kinda like the four gospels, when we put them beside one another, there's usually some interesting insights that we can find. So 1 Chronicles 10 repeats what we read earlier in first Samuel about why Saul's kingdom was taken away, but something is added. Read with me. So Saul died for his unfaithfulness which he had committed against the Lord because he did not keep the word of the Lord and also because he consulted a medium for guidance.

But he did not, listen, inquire of the Lord. Therefore, he killed him, God did, and turned the kingdom over to David, the son of Jesse. And so we see this is one of the reasons why it was taken away from him. And then third, it adds further depth to the story if we see the meaning of the name Saul and Samuel. They have some significance in interpreting these events.

Saul's name is just a word that is used often in the Old Testament in a number of different forms, but that word, that name Saul just means to ask or to inquire. And we see Saul asking inquiring a number of different times. When he is put in as king, what was it that the people were doing? They were asking God for a king, and he says, okay. I'll give you the one that you asked for.

His name is ask. His name is inquire. But it's interesting. It's not just Saul's name and this idea of asking or inquiring, but also the name of Samuel and what his name means. We remember the story of Samuel that his mother Hannah was without children.

She asked for a son, and she promised if she received a son from the Lord, she'd give him back in service to God. And in 1 Samuel 1:20, so it came to pass in the process of time that Hannah conceived and bore a son and called his name Samuel, saying, because I have asked Saul, sold him for him from the Lord. So the name Samuel means asked of God or by extension because he was the thing that was asked for and received, heard of God. And there's some debate about the exact etymology of Samuel's name, but, again, we see Hannah herself using this name Saul, using this name asked in describing the name of her own son, Samuel. So Saul means to ask.

Samuel means specifically to ask of God. In fact, we have that e l ending. Whenever you see that, that's the name God. Ask of God. So what does that mean for us?

Well, if we go back to 1 Chronicles 10:13-14, if Saul means asked and Samuel means asked of God, we could read this as he, Saul, consulted. He consulted a medium for guidance. That's the word that is used. His name, Saul. Saul, we might say, was solling.

He was asking, but not of the not of the Lord. In other words, we might say that Saul sawed, but he didn't Samuel. He didn't ask of God. Not really. So here's the point and what I wanna consider for the rest of our time this morning.

I wanna ask you. I wanna ask me, how does this wild story from the Old Testament relate to all of us? Let us all answer this question this morning. Do you Saul or do you Samuel? Do you ask or do you ask of God to be heard by him and to receive the things that he would have you to have in your life?

And I think if we examine this text closely, there are three things that maybe sometimes are traps, traps that Saul fell into and traps that we might fall into as well. Like Saul, we might be asking. We might be sawing. We might even doing... Be doing that in prayer, but not really inquiring of the Lord.

Did you catch that back in 1 Chronicles 10:13-14? It says that Saul did not inquire of the Lord. But 1 Samuel 28:6 says, when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him either by dreams or by Urim or by the prophets. Well, which one is it? Did Saul not inquire of the Lord, or did he inquire of the Lord, but God did not answer?

And as so often is the case, the answer is yes. I think Philemon puts it well in his commentary. 1 Chronicles 10:14 does not contradict 1 Samuel 28, but rather illustrates this spiritual truth that God can be sought either single heartedly or not at all. If we wanna inquire of the Lord, we have to be all in for the Lord if we desire to have a response from him. We might say that Saul made a half hearted effort to inquire of the Lord because he didn't really want to hear what the Lord had to say.

And heartless, lip service, and partial obedience was Saul's MO from early on in his time as king. You know, earlier in his reign, those three things that are listed there either by dreams, that's direct revelation by God, or by Urim. Remember those two things that the priest had in their breastplate, and they could say, this is God's answer or that's God's answer, so this is by the priest, or by prophets, the mouthpieces of God like Samuel who could come to Saul and tell him what it was God desired of him. He had had all three of those things earlier in his reign. All three of those things had been available to him, and he had ignored and neglected all of them.

And, eventually, he lost all of them. In fact, it was by his own actions that he had lost the spirit of the Lord where God would directly communicate to him through dreams. He, by his own actions, had killed a bunch of the priests where he didn't have availability of the breastplate of God anymore. He didn't have availability of the high priest. No.

The high priest was now with David, so he couldn't ask in that way. And none of the prophets would come to Saul because Saul was against the prophets of God. He had driven those prophets away. And yet, did you catch the way he talks to Samuel? I tried to read it in kind of a whiny voice.

Right? Because now Saul wants to play the victim. God's not answering me anymore. When he was the one who removed all of the avenues for God to answer him. And now God does something that he had never done before and never did since.

He uses a medium to talk to Saul. Yeah. Saul was asking, but he wasn't really inquiring of the lord. And you wanna say to Saul, really? Now you're the victim in all of this?

Oh, look. The consequences of my actions, we might say. And yet, can we put ourselves in his shoes? What do we think will happen when we ignore God's word and the clarity of what it says to us? Or we ignore God's people and the wisdom that they seek to provide us, or we ignore God's will that we know to be true.

We can pray for things in that situation, but why would we expect God to answer? God demands wholehearted devotion to him to receive the blessings of his answers to our needs and to our prayers. We see that, of course, in the New Testament. Turn to... Mark your spot in first Samuel.

We'll come right back. But turn to James 4 for just a second. All of these are New Testament concepts that are illustrated in our Old Testament. In James 4, beginning in verse 2, this is what James says. James, the brother of Jesus, as he was inspired by the Holy Spirit, says these words, you lust and you do not have, chapter 4 and verse 2.

You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war, yet you do not have because you do not ask. You're not asking God, or you ask and you do not receive like Saul because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures. You're not asking for the right reasons or with the right heart. Adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Whoever therefore wants to make... Be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the scripture says in vain, the spirit who dwells in us yearns jealousy. God desires our wholehearted devotion to him. And if our reason for asking is wrong or if we are not living for God and we're expecting him to answer and bless us, we're barking up the wrong tree.

And if we are going and asking everyone or anyone else instead of God, don't expect a powerful answer from God for our needs, for our desires. He is not a spirit to be summoned when it is convenient to us. He only did that one time here with Saul, and the results were not what Saul wanted. And if we are treating God as we would treat going to a medium for a seance, we have misread the God of heaven and earth. God wants you, all of you, heart and soul and body and mind.

God wants devotion, total devotion. He is a jealous god. And yet the love and the gifts that he gives, the grace that he bestows for those who are willing to come and truly inquire of him are beyond our greatest imaginings. Do you Saul or Samuel? Secondly, sometimes we keep stalling.

We keep asking because we don't like the first answer. We don't like the answer that God has given us to start with. By by show of hands, who in here has ever asked... After you talked with somebody, who is in here has ever asked, can I talk to your manager? You ever asked that?

Who? Okay. Now you don't have to be shy of You ask it. You ask it of that person. Yeah.

Done that. Right? I don't like the answer that I'm receiving, so let me appeal to a higher court. Right? Well, we have a whole court system that's based on that.

You can keep on appealing, and judges will hear it all the way to the supreme court in some circumstances. And, usually, we ask for this appeal for a couple of reasons. Maybe number one, we don't like the answer, or maybe number two, we just wanna talk to somebody who can actually do something about it. I've got this problem. I'm talking to this person.

They don't have the power or authority to fix my problem. So can I talk to somebody else? Somebody who does have the power and authority to deal what it is I'm having a problem with. And maybe our complaint is legitimate, and maybe it works out for us to ask for the manager, but you can't call the manager on God. He is the final authority.

And God's answer to Saul was clear by his non answer. Samuel says that. Why are you asking me? God isn't answering you. He has departed from you.

You have made him your enemy. I'm not with you, Saul. That was God's answer. And if God wasn't with him, then what was the answer to his question? Is he gonna win against the Philistines?

Is he gonna win against anybody? Defeat is certain without God. And yet, rather than repent and seek God fully, Saul just kept going to other places to ask, even to a medium, if that's what it took. And Samuel's response is chilling. I've already told you, Saul, and the Lord has done for himself as he spoke by me, as he spoke by me already.

For the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, David, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord. And like Saul, do we sometimes try and force the answer we want from God rather than accepting the answer that God gives us? We go to God's word, and we read, and we study, and we compare, and we say, oh, I don't like that. Or we go to wise people and ask, what is it that I must do to fulfill the will of the Lord? In this particular circumstance that I'm dealing with, we say, oh, I can't accept that either.

We seek God in prayer, and his answer continues to be the same. And so sometimes it drives us rather than accepting God's will to seek something or someone else who will tell us what we want to hear. In the study on the holy spirit, I enjoyed that so much. More lessons to come if you'll bear with me on some of those things, but I did a ton of reading, academic reading, but also just reading on... From various sources just to hear what people were thinking.

And there's lots of sincere people who are seeking to hear the holy spirit, hear the spirit's will. But there are also lots of people seeking to justify the things that the spirit has not allowed and what he has revealed in his word. Do we accept God's will? Do you? No.

That's the wrong way of asking it. Will you accept God's will, whatever it is? Our answer to that question should be yes. And then whatever the matter is, we've already answered yes. If it is God's will, I will accept it.

Or do we start seeking different answers after that will is abundantly clear? You know, there's always a witch out there who will give you a made up answer. And yet, even then, God might intervene and try and get the truth to us. Will we accept it even if we don't like it? You know, I picked this text from the Old Testament.

Preston got to do this. He said, you know, I wanna preach a lesson that I wanna preach. Right? Well, hopefully, every lesson is lesson I want to preach because it's the will of God in some ways, but I understand what he's saying by that. Right?

I just thought this was a cool story. I'd never preached on it. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna do that. And then that's how it started.

Right? Cool story. Neat story. I get to put Witcher Wee Indoor on the PowerPoint. That sounds really neat.

And then as I'm studying over the last few weeks, I'm getting sadder and sadder and sadder as I'm thinking about it. I'm like, this lesson is not cool as I thought when I started. And for the first time in my life, I think I really feel sorry for Saul. It's sad to me that Saul's story could have ended up so differently. And where do we find him at the end of his life?

This guy who had so much potential, you know, taller than everybody else, but he was humble, he was shy, he didn't take revenge on his enemies, he wanted to pay the prophet for whatever the prophet might have told him. That's how he started out, and yet we find him at the end of this story dressed into the skies, going to a witch's house, falling on his face, and it's just kind of pitiful as he hears about his own death. We kept reading. We quit reading in verse 20. But if we keep reading, if you go back there to 1 Samuel 28, you know what happens next?

There's no strength in him for he had eaten no food all day or all night. And the woman, the witch, came to Saul and saw that he was severely troubled and said to him, look. Your maidservant has obeyed your voice, and I have put my life in and I have put my life in my hands and heeded the words which you have spoken to me. Now if you've never read this before, what do you think she's gonna say next? Can you please leave?

Like, I did what you asked me to do. Get out of here. But, no, she has compassion on him. Verse 22. Now, therefore, please heed also the voice of your maidservant, and let me set a piece of bread before you and eat that you may have strength when you go out on your way.

But he refused and said, I will not eat. So his servants together with the woman urged him, and he heeded their voice, and he arose from the ground and sat on the bed. And the woman had a fatted calf in the house, and she hastened to kill it. And she took flour and kneaded it and baked unleavened bread from it. She brought it before Saul and his servants, they ate.

Then they rose and went away that night. I wonder if Saul, as he's sitting there on the ground, no doubt feeling sorry for himself, but I wonder if he had a moment of clarity where he thought, how did I end up here? You ever had a moment of clarity like that? How did I end up here? This is not what I intended.

This is not what I committed to when I became a Christian. This is not who I am. Why am I here? Why am I doing this? You know, you might say that this could have been his prodigal son moment where everything turned around, but instead, he just went away.

Instead of Samueling, instead of asking of the Lord and begging for forgiveness and restoration, he eats a little bit and he and he rises and goes away into the night. And too many too many who have the opportunity to know Jesus Christ, when the moment comes and they see their sin, they just arise and fade away into the night instead of coming to the light and knowing God once more. That's God's desire. That's God's desire for you, and that's God's desire for me. That's why he sent Jesus Christ.

And Jesus himself expresses this with a depth and beauty that I could not hope to imitate. In Luke 15, as he describes this parable of the lost things, right, the lost coin, the lost sheep, now the lost son. The prodigal son, we call him. This one who gets this inheritance from his father, he wasted away with riotous, gluttonous, filthy prodigal living. And when he spends all, there's a famine in the land.

And in verse 15, and he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine, and he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate. And no one gave him anything. Not the guy who owned the pigs, not his so called friends. But when he came to himself, he said, how many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger? I will arise and go to my father and say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants. And he arose and came to his father. When he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. Restoration was available from the hog pen.

And if I know the nature and character of God, restoration could have been available from the witch's house. And yet even in this account of the prodigal son, the father, God, gave the prodigal son his inheritance when he insisted on it. Why? Because God doesn't force us to do anything, and that's the third and final point this morning. Do you Saul or Samuel?

Well, God might Samuel. He might give what we ask for of him. He might Samuel what we ask for in our stubbornness, but if it's stubbornness against God's will, we won't like it when we receive it. Saul never liked the answer Samuel gave him in life, and now desperate to talk to him in death. Well, the answer to his question comes by God sending Samuel from the dead just like Saul wanted, but it isn't the answer he came looking for.

Saul is going to die along with his house. And it's funny. Sometimes God gives us what we want or more often allows us to do what we want, but in the end, it's not what we thought it would be. Do you remember the children of Israel in Numbers 11 how they're complaining and saying we ought to go back to Egypt because we had we had all this wonderful stuff there. We had fish and we had fruit and we had all these wonderful things to eat there.

Now all we have is this manna, you know, literal heaven bread, and they're tired of it. And they say, we want meat. And so God says, alright. I'll give you meat. I'll give you so much meat.

You've never seen so much meat. And quail comes, and it rots in their teeth. A plague comes while it's still in their mouths. God God gives them exactly what they asked for, but it is not at all what they wanted. Fine, God says.

You want it? Here it is. Husbands, have you ever had your wife say to you as you've gone back and forth about what you wanna do? Fine. Do what you want.

Brother, it is not fine. But even worse is when God says, fine. Do what you want. Romans 1:28 describes that. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting, and they worked all kinds of unrighteousness that is described there in Romans 1.

God God is saying in that passage, fine. This is not what is good for you. It's not what I desire for you. It's not how I would bless you, but I'm not gonna make you do what's right. I'm not gonna force you to love me or to follow me.

I'm not gonna impose my perspective on you even if that perspective is right and godly and for your good. You have the choice. And, loved one, you have the choice this morning, and so do I. We all have the choice either to inquire of God and do what he asks or to inquire everywhere else and do what we want. But maybe that's the wrong...

Maybe that's a false dichotomy, the wrong way to put it. You know, what God would have us to do versus what we want to do. Really, when it gets down to it, what we should be doing as Christians is more and more choosing to see things like God sees them, to desire the things that God desires for us. We should strive for our perspective on sin and temptation, certainly, but also on life and goodness and happiness and joy and peace for our perspective to be more like gods on those things. Instead of stubbornly insisting on what we desire, we should seek to have our desires aligned with god's.

Now I want you to turn to one last passage this morning, and the lesson will be yours. Will you turn to Galatians 5? Galatians 5 is an awesome contrast, a contrast between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. It's a similar contrast to what we often read in Romans 8 with being carnally minded versus spiritually minded. But Paul is extremely specific to the churches of Galatia.

These, Gentile Christians who had come out of ungodliness and idolatry and all these sorts of things, he says, what is it that you really want? I want you to listen to these things that are described here, and I want you to think in your own mind. Do I desire these things? Are these the things that I want? Are these the things that I insist on to say this will make me happy?

This will fulfill my life? Now the works of the flesh, verse 19, are evident, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murderers, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like, of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in times past that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Have you ever eaten something that you really liked and then you got sick, and now suddenly you don't like that thing anymore? I used to love steak and shake. We don't have any steak and shake.

Raise your hand if you know what a steak and shake is. Kinda... Well, I'm not gonna say what it's like because I don't wanna put you off on other places. So I've used to love steak and shake until in college, I was hugging the toilet after I'd eaten four steak and shake burgers, and a single bite of steak and shake has not passed my lip since. In fact, not too long ago, I went and got some gift cards for a preacher friend of mine and his wife who had put me up on a gospel meeting because they really love steak and shake.

And just walking in the door, was like, oh, this is this is not good. I don't like it in here. Well, my perspective has changed. It was... I once desired, I don't desire anymore.

But maybe a better illustration would not be just that you got sick off of it. Maddie's in culinary, and she's telling us... She's reading to us all the scores of the restaurants in Lufkin, like like, the scores that they've gotten on their health report. And all of a sudden, it's like, you know what? I don't think I wanna eat there anymore.

Like, I used to like it. I don't like it as much now, but that's the way it always was. I just see clearly now the way it really is. Loved one, that's what God can do for you if you let him. If you'll Samuel, if you'll ask of God, God will tell you, this is what's good for you, and this is what isn't.

Don't desire these things. These things, you're not gonna inherit the kingdom of God. Instead, your desire and mine should be... Verse 22, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such, there is no law.

Listen. And those who are Christ's, you're a Christian, have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit. I've crucified the passions and desires of my flesh because that's not the way God sees things. And now I'm walking after the spirit.

I don't need a witch, an indoor, or anybody else. What I need is the true and living God, and he has provided the way for me to ask him, and he promises that he will answer. Won't you, Samuel, this morning? Won't you ask of God? Because he is the one who has the answers.

And if you're not yet a Christian, won't you come to him and receive the promises that he gives of answers according to his will to those who love him? And if you're already a Christian and you realize you've been stalling way too much, you've been going after other things and asking all the wrong people in all the wrong places, come back to God. We've been there. We know what it's like, and we want you to be restored so that we might rejoice with you. And if we can help you even this morning, come while together we stand and while we sing.