A Repentant Heart

SUMMARY

In this sermon, Nolan Maples explores the concept of spiritual decay by comparing the lives of Saul and David. He identifies three stages of decay in Saul's life: tolerating a loss of intimacy with God, accepting poisoned relationships, and betraying core values. Maples uses Scripture, particularly from 1 Samuel, to illustrate these points, showing how Saul's spiritual decline led to his tragic end.

Conversely, Maples presents David as a model of spiritual formation, emphasizing his repentant heart and desire for a clean heart from God. He references Psalm 51:10, where David prays, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me." Maples encourages listeners to examine their own lives for signs of spiritual decay and to seek God's cleansing and renewal, emphasizing the importance of community and honest self-reflection in this process.

TRANSCRIPTION:

This morning's a special morning for us here at Broadway. I'm excited to get to introduce to you our summer youth intern, Nolan Maples. Now, Nolan may look familiar to many of you. He was our intern here a couple of summers ago, and we're excited to get to have him back. Nolan is studying Biblical text at LCU, and for the last year and a half, he's been working as the college ministry coordinator at the Plainview Methodist Church.

The summer, he'll be working primarily with Brian and our students in our youth ministry. But Nolan said, I want to keep growing my ministry skill set and repertoire. But it’ll be possible to shadow you a little bit, Karl, and take a look at this thing called preaching ministry, what that might look like, and have an opportunity even to preach maybe a time or two this summer. And this morning is one of those mornings. I'm excited for you to get to hear the message that God has put on Nolan's heart.

This morning, he's going to continue on in our series on David, which is not an easy task. And so he's chosen a challenging text. Actually, I assigned it to him. So ch. He chose that text at my assignment, but I've already gotten to hear him preach it, and I'm excited for you to get to hear what he has to say.

Nolan, come up here. Let me pray a blessing over you. God, we thank you so much for Nolan, for his love for you, his love for our students, and his love for your word. God, would you bless him and would you pour through him this morning the gift of preaching that we might be blessed to hear the word that you have to give to us through him, God, we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. Amen.

Well, Karl sure does set me up well. He makes the bar seem like it's here. I don't know. I wouldn't have your expectations so high. One thing about me is I love nature, and I've always really connected with God on another level in that.

And about two years ago, my brother planted some flowers in our front yard. We have this little garden, and it was just like bringing a little bit of nature, and so I could see God in that kind of way. And so they sprouted really well that first year. And this year. I vividly remember the first time I got home.

I. I pulled up in my car, and one little tulip was sprouting, and I could see it, and I was so excited. I'm actually a little bit embarrassed to admit how excited I was over one little flower, but it Was that part of me I connected. You know, I could see this blooming every day as I was coming home. Well, we've had some wild, weird weather this year, back and forth, right?

One of those cold spells came back and killed all of our flowers. And it just kind of disappointed me because I was expecting to come home to this beauty. And instead I came home for the next few days and just saw it kind of decaying until it was gone into nothing. That flower, that physical thing, just decayed. But, you know, physical things aren't the only things that can decay.

We can have spiritual decay, too. I think that's actually probably the saddest form of decay, a decay of the human spirit.

That spiritual decay isn't nearly as obvious. It's a lot harder to see the results and the progress and the drift of that decay than it is the physical decay. But David, who we've been looking at these past few weeks, has had a front row seat to see spiritual decay in a man called Saul. So today we're going to do something a little different to get a better look at David. We're going to line Saul and David up side by side and see how their hearts differ and how their paths differ.

Saul in his beginning was a man of great stature, right? They said he was head and shoulders above everyone else, that he was a man of honor, he was humble, and he had favor from the Lord. You look at all the potential he had in the beginning, the route that he was taking, and yet he ended in tragedy. So you have to ask the question, how did he end up that way? How did that happen?

Well, see, the problem was he never had the courage to be honest, to face the problems in his own heart, the brokenness that he was facing. And in sin, he just repeatedly dug this hole. And so it's not just a problem that Saul faces, is it? We face that same problem of sin repeatedly showing up in our lives. Well, on the other hand, we have David.

David is said to be a man after God's own heart. He said to chase after the Lord, and yet he's a person full of sin in the same kinds of ways that Saul was. In fact, I think if we're going to rank like the sins, the worst of the best, right? The top three worst, David can probably check the box of all three, or at least the top two, right? But we know them very differently.

We know Saul the Lord regretted that he made him king, and David was a man after God's own heart. So how did David go? Right? And how Did Saul go wrong? Well, I'd like to think of Saul's spiritual decay and three stages, and we'll take a look at all three of those today.

The first one is that Saul learned to tolerate a loss of intimacy with the Lord. He learned how to live knowing there wasn't any closeness with his heart and God's heart. Maybe that loss of intimacy looked like prayerlessness or not checking those little lies that he was telling. Or maybe it was just selectively being obedient to what God was telling him. Well, let's turn to chapter 16 in 1 Samuel and see this a little bit in Saul.

We'll have it here for you. Now, the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord terrorized him. So it came about. Whenever this evil spirit from God came to Saul. David would take the harp and play it with his hand, and Saul would be refreshed and well, and the evil spirit would then depart from him.

By this time, Saul has already done some horrible things in the king, and he's faltered. He's in this kind of stage of personal collapse.

If there's any kind of sign of being spiritually decayed or having distance from God, it's the spirit of the Lord departing from you, Right? That may be the biggest sign of them all. But there's another part here. It says an evil spirit upon him. If you ask me, that sounds pretty intense.

Right? If we take a little closer look at the Hebrew, that word for evil is ra, a or ra. And I think the Hebrew is really vast in its meaning. So if we take a little bit of a look at the nuances of the word, it may help us get a better grasp of the kind of situation that Saul is in. So that word can also be translated as harmful or distressing.

So he was in a distressed spirit, maybe distance from God. It was the actual decay of his spirit because it wasn't being connected to the Lord. He needed to see that it was his own hard heart that was disconnecting him. But he couldn't. He needed to repent.

But he settled for relief. Relief from the music that David sent him. This happens to us all the time. We need the courage to face our brokenness and to seek change. And yet we just turn to temporary relief from our sins, from the things leading us away from the Lord.

Temporary relief and some escape. Maybe that's music like it is for Saul or alcohol or work or even relationships. So I want to ask you the question, is there any way you are tolerating A loss of intimacy with the Lord.

Well, what's interesting is Saul, in his distress, doesn't even turn to the Lord right here. It shows that he's turning to David for that relief. Which brings us to our second stage of spiritual decay, which is Saul learned to tolerate poisoned relationships. Now, I don't think I have to begin to say how that appears in our world. Right?

You could probably just pull up Facebook, scroll about two times, and you'd see something where you're like, I don't know about that or any other media. Right. But this brings forward the kind of weird and dynamic relationship that Saul and David had. This back and forth of love and hate and jealousy and turmoil. Well, in 1 Samuel, chapter 18, David is repeatedly paired with the word success, so much so that Saul becomes jealous of him.

He hears David of having this success, and it just eats him to the core. Even though people sing songs, Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands. And then Scripture says Saul became very angry for this saying displeased him. And he said, they have ascribed to David 10 thousands, but to me, they have ascribed thousands. Now, what more can he have but the kingdom?

So then Saul looked at David with suspicion from that day on. So Saul is still seeing David, the man who he's loved for a long period of time, the man who has soothed him and met him in his darkest places. David is a man who Israel and God loves as well. And yet Saul is so blinded by his jealousy, he can't see love anymore. The only thing that relationship brings him is bitterness, jealousy, and hatred.

Some of us know the pay of poison relationships, maybe on the side of Saul, even where we're the ones, like throwing our spears, trying, maybe not trying to kill people like Saul, but right, we're throwing spears at people, hurling insults, pushing a distance. Or maybe we're like David, and we're just receiving this toxicity in little ways and bearing it, staying in this relationship. But if we learn to tolerate a poison relationship, we are making a mockery of the unity that. That Jesus came to die for. Right?

So we can look at poison relationships all around us. Families breaking ties, not talking to each other. I think divorce rates are still sitting right about 50%. That's the greatest example of poison relationships. Or maybe it's friends that tear you down instead of building you up.

Or it's that coworker that you try your best to avoid because you just don't want to have another conversation with them. There's countless other examples in all the kinds of relationships that you have. But I want you to think, are there any relationships in your life where you are tolerating poison?

The third stage of spiritual decay, the development that Saul has is that he betrayed the values he once staked his life on. These core values that maintained his relationship with Christ. He did a complete 180 on them and just deserted them. You see this best in 1 Samuel, chapter 28. I'm just going to give you a quick summary of kind of what happens in the development.

There we find that Saul has expelled all the mediums and the witches and the occult from the land, yet the Philistine army is coming over him. And he inquires of the Lord, what do I do? He doesn't get an answer from God, right? But I don't think Saul actually wanted an answer. Not from the Lord.

Maybe I think he just wanted an answer. Whatever was going to make him successful in battle, he didn't care whether it came from the Lord or not. And so we see him a little bit later in chapter 28. He turns to the witch of Endor. The very thing he just outlawed is now what he's turning towards for help instead of God.

But it doesn't really go the way he expects it, right? He consults with the witch of Endor, and they raised Samuel up from the dead. And Samuel casts God's judgment on him. He falls further into. He literally collapses onto the ground, shrivels up, and now he's literally and spiritually just the shell of the man he was.

This right here is the point where we see just how far Saul has deteriorated. He no longer has the attributes of honor and humility and that favor from the Lord. We know the spirit of the Lord has departed from him. And now we see he has pushed himself to the depths and there's no one there to even comfort him except for this witch that has no value to him.

This finally ends in Saul's death, an unsuccessful battle, and Saul end his own life.

Now, I don't think that Saul wanted to end up here. I don't think he ever was intentionally pointing himself in the direction of a crazed man who seemed to be filled with evil spirits, right? But he just drifted there over time, letting these little things go by, tolerating loss of intimacy, tolerating poison relationships, and betraying his values.

This image of drifting reminds me I've gone fishing with my dad a couple of times recently. And we have this little trolling motor. We sit in the water and, you know, Lubbock went right? You're going to get beat up no matter what day it is, and no matter how much you look at the weather, right? And so we're trolling along the edge.

The motor is pushing us, but that wind just keeps slapping us back into the bank. And so even at full speed, I mean, we're still going back. So we decided to go off to the other side, and we're protected by the cap rock a little bit. And I kind of think our spiritual drift is in that same kind of way where sometimes we're in the position where we're trying our hardest, we're pinpointed up to the Lord, and we're saying, I'm repenting. I'm seeking you to cleanse my heart.

And sometimes even still at full speed, we're going to drift back. And if we're not paying attention to where we are, we're going to look like Saul in no time. And sometimes, sometimes we're not at full speed, right? Sometimes we're just drifting along and we're okay with it. And next thing we know, we're in the same boat as Saul all the way down here, where we don't even recognize where we are.

Well, I want to ask you. This one's really important right here. Are there any ways that you have betrayed some of your core values, the values that tie your relationship with the Lord?

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was about spiritual formation. So, right, on the one hand, we're talking about Saul, spiritual decay, and on the other hand, we're talking about spiritual formation and the heart of David. One of the things that I was told about spiritual formation is that whether we're being intentional about it or not, we are always being spiritually formed. Whether we make a conscious effort to be formed towards God or we are unconsciously moving in a direction, we are being spiritually formed. And one of the things that Dallas Willard kind of gives a description of spiritual formation, he says spiritual formation in the tradition of Jesus Christ is the process of transformation of the inmost dimension of the human being, the heart.

So spiritual formation has something to do with the heart, like maybe being a man after God's own heart, right? So there's something to David's heart that he has a key for. Well, I want to look at Scripture, one more thing that scripture says about the heart. And this is a little daunting, but just stick with me. Jeremiah 17:9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things.

But here's the important. The heart is desperately sick. Who can understand it? To Me, that sounds a little disheartening. Yes, I intended to pun there, but it's true for all of us, right?

Our hearts are desperately sick with sin. And we ask the question, who can understand it? What can we do? Well, I think David seemed to understand if God is saying he's a man after his own heart. David understood that the cure for the sickness of our heart is a heart transplant, is aligning ourselves with God's heart and allowing him to replace it.

He says it in Psalm 51. Carl just read it for you earlier. And we just sang a song about it.

Maybe not. There we go. He says, created me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. He wants to be renewed. And what's really cool, this word create is the exact same Hebrew word that you see in Genesis 1:1.

God created the heavens and the earth. So he literally wants newness in his heart to take away the sickness and replace it with God's heart in himself.

This aspect of David's heart, his spiritual formation that we are honing in on is his repentant heart. He seeks a clean heart from the Lord repeatedly and turns back. He reorients himself instead of drifting away and decaying.

To have a repentant heart looks a lot different than just normal living, right? And I think, well, let's just take Saul, right? Saul as a king, an ancient king, probably looked pretty normal, right? He was doing at any cost to save his people. He was seeking out advice from anyone he could see.

He was trying to push people to take that were competing for the monarchy out of the way, like he did with David. And yet what we just looked at with Saul is he was completely not normal. He was decaying inside. And so many people just looked right past it. I don't want us to be the same way.

Well, John Ortberg writes this book called Everybody's normal T until you get to know them. Right? So, yeah, just wait. So that made me think, right? I interact with lots of people recently.

The person I've probably interacted most is Brian O man. And Brian's a weirdo, let me tell you. Ok, so I've walked into Brian's office multiple times just in the last week, and he's singing or humming some children's song from a show that Barrett or I'm sure Barrett, they put on for him every time I walk into his office. It's hilarious. Or, let me think, another example for Brian.

Okay, well, Reese just came up here. There's only two people in this church that love F1, right? And it's Reese and Brian. And let me tell you, oftentimes it's like the first thing they talk about. So we went out to lunch with some of the youth.

And the first thing Brian does when he sits down, he's like, hey, Reese, look at this thing about F1. Nobody else cares. But those two love it, right? They're all quirky and weird for it, but everybody's normal t until you get to know them. Well, one of the chapters in Ortberg's book is called Heaven Normal at last.

Because that normalcy that we're seeking is actually just being in tune with the heart of the Lord, to have this clean heart from God inside of us. But until the Lord comes again and the kingdom of God is fully realized, we live in this space where we still have a sickness in our heart, but we can pursue this clean heart, and that comes through repentance.

So as we look at these stages of spiritual decay, and I ask you the do you see any one of these in your life? I want you to take a second again and look at these things, really be honest with yourself. Do you see places where you're tolerating a loss of intimacy? Do you see places where you're tolerating poison relationships? Do you see places where you're betraying your core values?

I want to slow down and ask each one of you, look up to God and ask, how are things between you and me? Because if we look at these things and we're not careful and we're not paying attention, we're going to keep drifting and decaying instead of being spiritually formed towards the Lord.

Maybe it's a loss of intimacy with God, but I don't want you to shy away from it. If it's poisoned relationships, then seek good community. Ask who can be the David in my life? And as I look around here, right, there's all these people with name tags on in the church. Your staff, your elders, people that volunteer.

Those people can be your David. They can walk with you in these things. They want to. We want to walk with you.

If it's betrayal of values, right now is high time to slow down and look around where you are, turn back and push yourself closer to God. If we'll choose to be honest and face our brokenness with faith and courage to allow God to work in us both individually and as a community, we will be utterly changed and we will have this newness of creation that the world does not think is normal. So I want to pray really quickly. Lord, we invite you into this space to give us courage to seek more of you and less of us. God, we're thankful that you cleanse and heal us.

Amen.