Attributes of a Godly Leader

Attributes of a Godly Leader

All right. Good morning. It’s good to see you. Good to be with you if you’re joining us online. Thanks for joining us. Also today. We’re gonna continue with our Siris on first Samuel. And like Cindy said, we do have workbooks out in the lobby. Their $5 you can throw five bucks and the tide box. We have a ton of these. We would really like, you know, have them. They’re great to use for notes, uh, discussing in your community group if you don’t have five bucks. Still take one. No one will know anyways, but we want you to have one. They are a good resource. So, uh, today we’re actually gonna be on part three? Yep. We’re skipping part to Ben’s gonna pick that up next week because it goes great with what he is going to be speaking to us about. So we are on part three in your workbook, which is first Samuel, Chapter three in your Bibles. So if you turn there with us this’ll morning. So even before we get started, the titles called Searching for a Leader. And so what? I want to give us some backdrop here where we kind of have to different plotlines going. We have two different, um, veins here. That one is Samuel Samuel. Eli. The other one is the nation Israel. Right. So, Samuel, we see from last week his mom, Hannah, was unable to have kids, and so she lived in this world of sorrow and despair. She was she was, uh, really tormented by this even by the second wife that her husband took, who was able to have kids and really tormented her and rubbed that in her face. And then, to say the least, her husband was insensitive. That’s probably a pretty nice way to put it in the way that he responded there. But Hannah he was this faithful woman, and she and she went to God and she just pleaded to God for a child. And she said, Lord, if you give me a if you give me this son, I’ll give him back to you all the days of his life and what happens that happens. God gives her a son, and early on she gives him back to the Lord to serve in the temple all the days of his life under the high priest Eli Now, the other story line that we have going on is Israel. Israel at this time is really in a dark spiritual state, both physically and spiritually, right there, really living in darkness on. We’ll see that they just kept going through this cycle right there, just in the cyclical pattern where they would sin, they would be taken into captivity right under bondage. And then eventually they would repent and they would be restored, and then they’d sin, and then they would go into bondage. Then it’s a cycle over and over and over again. And what would happen is during that cycle, right, they would they would turn to other gods, idolatry, polytheistic beliefs they would bring in these other gods. And clearly the Lord God had forbidden that well, there would be repercussions to that, and they would be taken over by our oppressors. And then God would raise up these judges, these leaders. So if you look at the Book of Samuel 1st and 2nd Samuel right before that is the book of judges in the book of Judges really goes through these leaders that continue to get raised up in the whole cycle, where they would sin. They’d go into bondage and then raise up these leaders, these judges, and then they would repent over and over again, the whole book really being about that. And now we come to first Samuel, where Eli And now Samuel Samuel is the final judge. So he’s the transition here, the final judge between the Book of Kings right, which which, which is right after second Samuel. So this is the transition from judges to a monarch. They’re gonna have kings from here on out. And then you see the story of the Kings. But they’re in a dark place right now, and God raises up Samuel. So on a high level, we can step back. And we look at this cyclical nature and there’s a lot of things we can learn about ourselves about people in general. But obviously the title that we’re looking at here in this book is searching for a leader. And so one aspect that I want to draw out that is very clear is that when there are times of difficulty, when there are challenges that have to be faced in the road, that we have to walk on his tumultuous that leadership is critical. Leaders are very important. We’ve all probably experienced it from time to time. You know you whether it’s your job or just in your home or wherever. It’s that you’ve experienced times of good leadership and how under good leadership people flourish. There is a unity right. They thrive. There’s just a lot of benefits to good leadership. But on the flip side, where there’s poor leadership, we’ve also probably experienced how it just causes strife in division and difficulty. It makes things really hard. Leadership does matter now. This never is toe get in place of God’s ultimate leadership, right? God is our supreme leader always. But what I don’t want you to think is that how he uses leaders today around us is the antithesis of faith, that z not what it is. God actually uses leaders, you and I to see his gospel go out to sea. Lives changed to see good and benefit come from it. So God uses godly leaders. We’ve seen it in the Bible as you read your Bible. There’s lots of situations, lots of examples of really good leaders. There’s a lot of them examples that are bad leaders to, But he’s used leaders for all of time, and that’s no different than today. He is still using leaders today, and so what I want to draw out of our section today is, well, what are those qualities? What are those attributes of a godly leader? Because First Samuel three, even though it’s kind of subtle within, it has a lot of emphasis on what a godly leader on somebody who God can use. So let’s open open our Bibles or open your workbooks. Here, the first annual three. I’m gonna read verses one through 10, says the boy. Samuel served the Lord and Allies presence. In those days. The word of the Lord was rare, and prophetic visions were not widespread. One day, Eli, whose eyesight was failing, was lying in his usual place. Before the lamp, A god had gone out. Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the Ark of God was located. Then the Lord called Samuel, and he answered, Here I am. He ran to Eli and said, Here I am. You called me. I didn’t call you, Eli replied. Go back and lie down. So he went and lay down once again, the Lord called Samuel Samuel got up. Went to Eli. Here I am. You called me. I didn’t call you my son. He replied, Go back and lie down Now. Samuel did not yet know the Lord because the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. Once again, for the third time, the Lord called Samuel. He got up, went to Eli and said, Here I am. You called me. Then Eli understood that the Lord was calling the boy. He told Samuel, Go lie down. If he calls, you say, speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. The Lord came, stood there and called us before Samuel Samuel Samuel responded. Speak for your servant is listening. If so, the first one that I would draw out in this section again, even as it’s subtle, is that there has to be a humility. It is the foundational characteristic of what God will use for Ah, for a leader is humility. There cannot be this over shadowing pride in our heart for God to use us, especially someone who got uses for a long period. of time is, we’ll see. So Eli was supposed to be the servant of God. And yet Samuel displayed this amazing servants heart, and it says he served Samuel. He said he served at the temple. He was very faithful in what he did. Even when God calls, he says, Speak for your servant is listening Now The title of the Servant is probably not like this ambitious title. A lot of people are running after, um, but really inside the church, you know, it’s kind of a unique position inside the church where humility is is really one of the pinnacle characteristics of what we would look for in a leader, so it’s a little bit of a unique characteristic. But God modeled that it’s not like that’s a new thing that God is saying, Hey, I want you to be humble and he never demonstrated that for us. God demonstrated as he sent his son, and Mark, 10 45. We see, for even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom. For many, Soto put yourself as a servant. Under somebody can be difficult. You have to humble yourself to say no, I’m at your will. I will respond. I’ll do these things. And a lot of times in the Bible, the word is actually translated slave. Now the word slave has a lot of negative connotations today, and even in that light on all those negative connotations, it may be the most fitting word how we take our lives and as a slave place ourselves under the authority of Christ, right? We think of Slave is having no rights being stripped of all the rights and authority that they have. And obviously it’s a bad thing when that is taken from somebody. But here, when you think about this a slave, we position ourselves as a slave of Jesus Christ. Paul even says as a slave of Jesus Christ, because he says, I have no rights when it comes to my will versus God’s will. In that situation, I am a slave to Christ. And so it is a very fitting context and why Paul uses that word and why it’s translated many times as slave. It’s a servants heart where my will versus God’s will I will always humbly submit to that situation I look around, I think about, you know, celebrity pastors right now. And why do we see so many celebrity pastors who fall into moral failure? I mean, this is a prominent thing across our country all the time. You hear of these prominent celebrity pastors who have fallen into this moral failure? And why is it? Well, they may have started with this humility, but there’s a really battle when it comes to fame and prosperity in a celebrity status. When you get propped up that fights against all the natural inclinations of being humble and so what happens is all of a sudden they become influencers and they have power in the authority to make things happen. And they feel like, Yeah, yeah, I deserve this. And you know, I could do that and they compromise and no longer they humble. But they were living with this pride. I mean, think about John the Baptist, right? He very well known in the Jewish community. And he’s got this big crowd of disciples, and also the disciples start leaving. And some of them say, John, they’re all going to follow this guy Jesus. And did John say, Well, hey, we need the big crowd. Let’s get him back. No, he says No, God needs to increase right. Jesus needs to increase. I need to decrease. And if we don’t do that, if we don’t fight for that position of humility, we will find ourselves in the same position. Whether you have fame or not, it is the exact same thing. There is a fight for humility in our lives, and we have toe not let other things creep in on it again. God was a perfect example in Philippines says, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by being obedient even to the point of death. Death on a cross. Our perfect example is Jesus who actually deserves fame. If anybody deserves fame and glory and whatever celebrity status you wanna put on it, that’s Jesus. And even though he deserved that, he gave us an example by submitting himself in humility, to die on a cross for things that he was never guilty of. He is the perfect example for us and all the time when we talk about humility, right when you want to challenge somebody to think about humility, you might ask them, You know. Ask yourself, Are you a humble person? I always think it’s a really weird question, because if you answer no, it’s pretty straightforward. But if you answer yes, doesn’t it feel like you’re not being humble? So I usually to say, How about this? I think a more practical example. As look at your last week, can you recall any situations where you had to choose humility where you chose even in a place where you might have had the right to make the decision to humble yourself to the will of somebody else to the choice of somebody else? Have you found yourself in a position where you need to be humble because you did something wrong and apologize the humble yourself and say, I’m sorry I did you wrong because we talk about being men and women of faith, being doers of the word and we can have it all stored up here. But I think farm or relevant is if you have examples in your life where you say you know what, I’m gonna exercise humility here. I’m gonna I’m gonna do this by choice Toe humble myself. And I’m following the example of my savior another one that we could look at as a characteristic would be diligence. Samuel. I mean, we think about diligence. It’s his persistence, right? A careful persistence. You could use the word, steadfastness, persistence. But it has an element of time, Right? You can. We can all do something real quick. Just I did it once. It’s good. I’m not never gonna do that again. But when you when you have something good and you do it over and over and over that diligence, that is more rare that that is mawr powerful. And usually you see Samuel and again. It’s very subtle. But serving in the temple has a lot of rituals, a lot of tasks. A lot of things that have to get done in this boy 12 years old, as most historians would mark him, is very faithfully, diligently serving time and time again in the first three chapters. Actually, it notes that three different times it emphasizes that Samuel served in the Lord’s Temple. He also served Eli, right. Eli is old, uh, he’s losing his eyesight and the Bible’s pretty kind, the way he describes him as heavy, and he needs help. He he’s in the night. This is why, Samuel replies, because he’s sleeping close enough to know that my master may call and I need to respond and he does multiple times as we see and he responds quickly. But he is very diligent and the things that he does time and time again, over and over again. So most good things don’t just happen overnight. Ah, lot of times we look at something or somebody who’s been successful in, we think man, they just hit the jackpot, right? But most of time, that’s not the case. We don’t see the years, the hours, the weeks, the decades that they have put in time in time and more effort in energy. And then we just see the result. Wow looking. Look what they look, that it didn’t just happen overnight. I would say this. The greatest things I have ever done in my life by the grace of God have come from many little steps in the same direction. It wasn’t this big flash didn’t jump this chasm of life and just arrive. Anything good that I have done, I can attribute to just very small steps in the same direction. You just keep going. Keep going. Keep going. I think about if I want to know the word of God, I just don’t slam the Bible open and plow through it in a week. I read the whole Bible in a week. That’s good. But that’s not gonna be the diligence that builds this godly character, right? If I want to know the word of God, it’s gonna be bringing that in. Taking that in overtime. If I wanna be a godly husband if I wanna be Ah, faithful servant. If I wanna be good at something, it’s gonna be because I’m going in the same direction. Many steps, small steps in the same direction. What happens is we’ve all been there, right? You You start a couple days later, you look back here like let it go very far. But when you look back after a year and you’re like, look where I came from, look at the progress that has been made and that’s the important thing is that small steps in the same direction, being faithful. If I wanna have a godly marriage of pursuing my wife for the years to come, that’s what it is. I don’t get a buyer, a really big present and then be like I’m done for the year, right? No, it’s these faithful small steps in the same direction. If I want my kids to be godly, it’s gonna be the Knights of cataclysm with, um, it’s gonna be explaining Bible verses to him at the dinner table. We share our Bible verses. It’s gonna be these little things over and over and over again, being diligent in them. And eventually we’re gonna look back and say, Look at the good that has come from it And God uses that type of leader who’s willing to just diligently plug away, plug away, remain faithful. In doing that, we go through ebbs and flows. I know that it’s not always easy, but in Second Peter, it reminds us to make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self control, self control with steadfastness to keep going, to keep pushing forward steadfastness with godliness. Godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love diligently move forward. Another characteristic would be that they’re responsive. Ah, leader that God is going to use is gonna be responsive. Samuel gives us I believe just a beautiful image of responding the way God calls us Thio. What does he dio? Well, he thinks it’s Eli, right? But even Eli, he says, Here I am again. Here I am multiple times here I am and then one Samuel tells him, Hey, say this Here I am again, he responds quickly. He’s there, and that is so important. Are growing up. I mean, my wife used to say to our boys, Slow obedience is no obedience, just what we had in our house as we’re trying to teach our kids to obey, to obey quickly. They have that heart in this 12 year old boy, Samuel. He’s challenged my heart. I mean, he’s a young boy, and he’s responding that way. That’s such a beautiful image of the way I would hope to respond to God. But all too often I tend to be more like Gideon. If you remember getting in the Bible, God has called him to take this courageous action. And what did you dio He takes this blanket? He says, All right. God, if you called me, I want you to confirm it. I’m gonna throw this blanket on the ground in the morning. I went the ground to be full of do but the blanket to be dry. What happens exactly that? So naturally, you would think he just okay and does it right. But all too often my heart tends to be kind of like the next step Gideon takes. He says, Well, let’s try this again, Lord, how about this time I’m gonna throw the blanket down. Can you make the blanket wet in the ground dry? Then I’ll really know, right? And it happens exactly like that. God confirms his call. Now. God, thankfully, is very, very patient. It’s not my heart to test God. That’s that’s not what I want, right? I wanna obey quickly, like Samuel. But I am thankful that God has been so generous and kind and his patients towards me, even when I tend to be slow to respond. But my heart, ultimately, is that I want to respond quickly and completely. When the Lord calls me in verse seven. It says now Samuel did not yet know the Lord because the word of the Lord had not been revealed to him. So the clear meaning of this is that Samuel had not known God previously as a prophet, obviously in the temple serving the Lord, all these rituals being in a Jewish culture, being with the high priest, many other priests. It wasn’t a lack of information. He he knew mentally. God who? Yeah, we waas. But he did not know him in his voice as a prophet. Now, was this a time of personal faith? What we would relate to salvation? I don’t know. And in fact, it doesn’t throw the story off either way. I mean, we know he’s a man of God. I just don’t know if that’s exactly when it happened, but either way, we see that he responds quickly when he knows it is God. And so I want to draw out two things here. Parents and kids. I wanna dress you guys specifically, parents. Do you think that the way you train your kids to respond into react to your words the obedience in which they show from your requests that they will respond any differently to the Lord? If you think that they your kid can respond slowly to you, disrespectful to you ignore you and that for some reason, they’re just gonna respond gloriously to God and quickness and complete obedience. I mean, that’s just foolishness. You have to realize in our training of our Children that were tryingto help them to respond quickly to their authority, even to us as parents, because the way they respond to you as parents is ultimately going to be their initial response to God. No. I’m thankful that I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, and sadly, I didn’t have good responses to my parents. In God’s faithful call in my life, he continued to pursue me, and I had to then later learn how to respond quickly to God again. He was very faithful and generous and kind in that area. But it is a great advantage that your kid learns to respond to you because they will respond initially that way to the Lord. And on the flip side, any kids or young adults in your parents home. You remember the Fifth Commandment, the honor, your father and mother. You cannot pretend to be responding quickly to God while ignoring the commandment to honor your father and mother in respond quickly to them. In fact, not responding quickly to your mother and father is to not respond quickly to God’s Fifth Commandment. So we want to be a people who reply and respond quickly to our Lord. All right, let’s look at the other versus here, starting in 11 through 21. Mhm, the Lord said to Samuel. I’m about to do something in Israel that everyone who hears about about it will shutter. On that day, I will carry out against Eli everything I said about his family from beginning to end. I told him that I was going to judge his family forever, because the iniquity he knows about his sons air cursing God, and he has not stopped them. Therefore, I have sworn to allies, family, the iniquity of allies. Family will never be wiped out by either sacrifice or offering. Samuel lay down until the morning. Then you open the doors of the Lord’s house. He was afraid to tell Eli the vision, the deal. I called him and said, Samuel, my son here I am his answer again. Here I am, he answered. What was the method she gave you? Hell, I asked. Don’t hide it from me. May God punish you and do so severely. If you hide anything from me that he told you so. Samuel told him everything and did not hide anything from him. Eli responded. He is the Lord. Let him do what he thinks is good. Samuel grew and the Lord was with him and he fulfilled everything. Samuel, Prophet Side, all Israel, from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was a confirmed prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear in Shiloh because there he revealed himself to Samuel by his word. So another thing that we have to look at is a characteristic of a godly leaders that we have to engage in difficult conversations. I’ll be honest. This is one of my least favorite parts of a leader. If I could avoid this, I would do so. But God calls us and we have to engage sometimes in difficult conversations. You know, the way my brain thinks I’m just kind of like you’re an adult and you say, You know, God, why don’t you to work it out? And yet God says, Hey, Shane, I’ve used you and you guys as brothers and sisters toe help each other to sharpen each other, and you need to engage in a difficult conversation and I’d have to remember in Proverbs 27 where says faithful are the wounds of a friend. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it till I die. The very the most difficult things I’ve ever had to hear have come from the people I love most. Why? Because I know that they love me by saying these things. They brought hard things, hard conversations to my life when I have sinned when I have been an air. Why? Because they love me. They knew that that was gonna hurt, that that might not be a easy conversation, even that there might be conflict. But at the end of the day, they knew that it was for my benefit. Why do I say these things? Why do I say we have to engage in difficult conversations? Because I gotta be faithful to the Lord. But also I need to love you enough to not let you wallow in sin. You need to love me enough not to let me stay in my sin. And guess what? Those are tough conversations. Sometimes 1st 15 tells us Samuel was afraid to tell Eli, Can you imagine being Samuel, this 12 year old boy who Eli as the high priest, Really the most paternal figure he has in his life? Most influential person he’s probably had in his life, the one he serves under loves and cares for God skips the high priest and gives the understudy a prophetic vision. And it’s not like this. Nice, prophetic vision is this prophetic vision that Eli and his family are gonna be wiped out, destroyed his lineage, cut off forever. And now you know he’s gonna ask. Can you imagine getting that? And now having to go back to bed, you need to be laying there for the rest of the night. Yeah. Okay. You know, he’s gonna ask, and he does. Eli asked him. What did he say? Don’t hold back anything. And he tells him he has, ah, hard conversation with him. And that’s really an important thing about a profit, right? I mean, ah, profit is to speak exactly as God has told him. And a lot of times now, you know, we have to realize that we’re gonna be in difficult conversations. People are gonna ask you about things about the Bible. What about hell? What about LGBTI Kick? What about abortion? What about? I mean, there are hard conversations we’re gonna have tohave. And what happens, though in Christianity, unfortunately, too many times people want to soften the edges in the withhold truth by telling the parts. It’s like when people share the gospel and they’re like, Hey, God loves you and you know, you accept them, you get saved and everything is great, you know? Well, that’s not the way it works. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of try to tell them Hey, being a Christian, you means you have to be humble on. You have to submit yourself to others, right? They have to forego, forgo lots of worldly pleasures that you have to have difficult conversations. And so we have toe have those difficult conversations with truth. You have to remain truthful with the word of God, but also with grace. He has called us to give answers and to being difficult conversations with truth and grace. So and we need to erase this image of, like the leadership that if I’m a good leader, things, they’re gonna just be perfect. It’s like this utopian view that everyone’s gonna love me and that it’s just easy. We have to erase that from our memory. Our from our image of a leader. Being a leadership is hard, and you have to make difficult choices. Think about some of the people in the Bible that I had to make difficult choices and have difficult conversations. Mean David, a great leader and his son tries to kill him and takes over his throne. Paul, the people he loves is telling him this truth and some of it they don’t like to hear. And so the people he loves stone him, drag him out of the city because they think he’s dead. Aaron and Moses leading the Israelites out of captivity. And then they get all leery about Aaron and Moses, and they talk about stoning them. Difficult conversations are not gonna always put us in the easiest of positions, but Galatians remind us. Let us not grow weary in doing good for in due season. We will reap if we do not give up, don’t give up, continue to pursue those things in a similar vein, though difficult decisions a lot of times out of these difficult decisions are difficult conversations comes difficult decisions. So the other one is You have to make hard decisions sometimes, Ah, Leader is gonna have to make hard decisions, and I’ll be honest with you. 2020 could be defined by hard decisions, and that was the roughest year than I can ever recall as a leader and not just as a pastor. As a leader of my family. I knew there were times that I was gonna have to lead and make a difficult decision. And even where my wife and I might not see the situation, the exact same or my kids might not like my decision that I had to make a decision to be faithful to God in those situations. And if any of you are married and you and your wife don’t see eye and you make a decision that doesn’t see eye to eye with her to put it lightly, it causes tension, right? It would be easier to be like whatever you want, just have it cause I’d rather not have to do it hard stuff. And yet, as a leader, we have to make hard decisions, and I’m thankful. Have a wife who is incredibly gracious and serves me and makes it as easy as possible. But life is filled with hard decisions. E think about as a pastor, Mike, Ben and I. We knew we were making decisions last year that not everyone would agree with. We knew that there are things that we had to make choices on, that there is no way to please everyone. And as much as we love each and every one of you, our concern was not to please you. It was the remain faithful and to please God. But I will say this. I am so thankful for the church God has given us because even in those situations, you guys have been incredible. You have loved us. You have supported us. You have been amazing and they’ll be more on that. But I think it’s been a huge benefit for the world to see. There’s been a lot of tough decisions. I’m not perfect. None of us are perfect, and we’re not even gonna make all the best decisions always, and you’ve been very gracious in those things. Eli, though in allies case, it’s a little bit different. Eli was confronted because you know he had this confrontation with his son’s. Initially, uh, it’s actually in the previous chapter for Samuel to 23 says he goes to his sons and say, Why are you doing these things? I’ve heard about your evil actions from all the people, right? He really softly tiptoes around. Hey, boys, you’re not honoring God. But then the Lord holds him responsible for not making tough decisions. Okay, for Samuel, 3 13 says, I told him that I’m gonna judge his family for every because the iniquity he knew about his sons are cursing God and he didn’t stop them. So let’s distinguish this. Eli is not being held accountable for his kids sin. They’re grown adults who are choosing to sin. But what he is being held accountable for is that he is in a position that he didn’t fulfill. He didn’t make tough decisions. He’s the high priest, these air priests under him. He knows there’s iniquity. He needs to fire them. He needs to expel them from the temple. He needs to rid them from God’s presence. And he needs to do what’s right to cleanse that temple from known iniquity. But what does he dio he doesn’t do it. He doesn’t do what he needs to dio, and I know it’s hard when it’s your own family. But if you’re ever in a position where it’s either to please God or to be liked by people you choose pleasing God, it will pan out much better in the long run. So he tells him, You’ve honored your sons more than me by making yourself fat with the best part of the offerings of my people. So Eli was being lazy and apathetic and unwilling to act. And that’s why God is telling him. What I’ve never understood is he was so lazy and unrepentant because this prophecy actually came earlier for the first time. And there’s examples in the Bible where God will prophesized something and a king will repent, and God will then say, Hey, did you see the way he repented? I’m gonna withhold that destruction that I told him I was gonna have. And here Eli knew about this, and he was so unwilling to make hard decisions that he didn’t repent. He didn’t take those hard choices, even though he knew the end result was gonna be destruction. He would not make a hard choice. We’ve got to make a hard choice. Sometimes we’ve got to make tough decisions. But what happened? Though it wasn’t just the fact he didn’t make hard decisions, he ended up compromising his integrity and integrity is something God calls people tohave. It’s another characteristic that God calls in integrity means to be unimpaired, uncompromised, pure, really doing what is right, no matter the cost. I was reading problems the other day, and there are just verse after verse after verse of integrity and how God really lifts up men and women of integrity. A couple of them were that God shields those who live with integrity. Another one is the upright will inherit the land, and those with with integrity will remain in it. He sustains them. God both honors and values moral integrity, not allowing ourselves to be corrupted by those things that are flesh can desire the sin of the world, temptations that weaken find so appealing to be un adulthood by them to be to remain pure uncompromised is toe hold that moral integrity that godly integrity. Eli did not keep his integrity. In fact, that’s the problem is he knew that his sons were plunging these forks into these raw sacrifices before he was supposed to. So they would bring out these giant pieces of meat, and that was an abomination to God. And what happens? Well, hell, I knew it was wrong, but he didn’t stop himself from really indulging. He got fat off of those stolen sacrifices. He compromised his integrity and he compromised his conscience. That is the exact opposite of what a leader would dio. Lastly, we have to understand that. Ah, Leader accepts responsibility, Samuel. He was very faithful in accepting his responsibility as a judge and as a prophet. He spoke what God told him to speak. And God did not allow any of his words to fall to the ground. He was very faithful not to hide some of the hard things that God prophecy through him, but to speak as God has asked him to speak. He accepted the responsibility of a profit. Because when you have bad news, people don’t like a profit. You got good news. You’re a hero. But he spoke. What? God asked him to speak. He lay. On the other hand, he he end up accepting responsibility. Essentially for his neglect of responsibility. Right at the end, he says. You know, what does he say? Samuel tells them allies responses. He is The Lord. Let him do what he thinks is good. So he accepts the punishment, which is really accepting responsibility for his lack of responsibility. And he was so passive. He just said, Fine, I’ll take it. So if you’ve spent any significant time with the leader, someone you would consider a leader, someone who his influential who has to make tough decisions, I would expect at some point you have heard them apologize for saying a sharp word for being rude for not listening for their own personal sin for decisions that they made that didn’t pan out well, Ah, Leader accepts that responsibility, and when he needs to, he repents and he takes ownership and he apologizes. The Bible says, Be holy because I am Holy God puts that standard up there. Yet he does know that we are going to send right. The fact that you have sinned did not catch God off guard. He knew that, but he gives us the option to take two different postures. We can take the posture of humility. We can accept responsibility for the choices that we’ve made. Then we can act and repentance, turn back to God and apologize and accept the forgiveness that he so freely gives us. But the other posture is one of pride, and it says, No, no, I don’t That’s not my problem. Yeah, that’s his fault. You blame other people, you act in pride, and God’s very clear pride goes before destruction. I know in this world just like you do, like if we if we would view this world, is kind of our life is a school. I know I’m gonna fell some tests along the way. I know that. But I know at the end of the day, I also pass the class. We’re not gonna act perfectly in all situations, but we are called to take responsibility for our mistakes. We have to understand that decisions have consequences. And if you’re gonna be a leader and make tough decisions, you’re gonna have to accept responsibility. I’ve been in a lot of different leadership positions, from sports teams to business to the church to leading my family. You know, the most humbling experience of accepting responsibility as with my kids. It just flat out is I remember. I remember a time when I spoke harshly to my son as I correct him in tears well up in his eyes. For a young kid, tears aren’t all that uncommon, but in this case, if you could have physically seen it was that a soul being crushed because I was not acting as a leader that God had called me to be. And as that conversation ends and my son goes away, I’m convicted and I walked back to my son, and now I have tears in my eyes and I have to take responsibility and apologized to my son for a wrong that I did, and my kids will see me very raw for the rest of my life. They’re going to see things that none of you get a C in Mawr than just the wrongs that I have in my own life. What I pray that they see is a man who will accept responsibility, who will take ownership, who will apologize, who will repent and I trust and believe that more than my words that they’re going to see my actions. My growth in my love, and they’re going to respond to that. That that they have a dad, a man that will take ownership and responsibility for his God given role. That’s hard. But it is true. That is the most humbling experience in my life. And yet it probably is gonna be one of the greatest lessons for both me and my kids. Yeah, we have the the attributes of a godly leader of being humble, of diligence, of being responsive, responding quickly, making difficult decisions, having difficult conversations, holding our integrity and accepting responsibility. All those flow from this chapter alone. And I think about our world today. And I look out there what we’ve seen transpire in this last week, what we have seen transpire in this last year. It saddens me. I see people who are hurting, who are angry, who are in pain, who are guided by their own principles and led by their emotions and in response. A lot of the United States and much of the world has looked and turned our gaze to the political leaders to give us the answers. And they have found themselves lacking and disappointed. But in the same what I see also in this situation. It does stir my heart and stiffens my spine. When I think about right now the opportunity the church has to take its rightful place in society, that is, People look out across the world and they look to these people who cannot give them the answers when they look to social ingenuity and creative measures that will never solve their problems. What they should be doing is looking to the church, and we hold the answers to all the problems our society deals with. We should be the pinnacle example for anybody to look at. They could look at our church and say, Look at these people who come together who have varying opinions who have varying backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, ethnicities Look at all their differences and yet they’re held together. Why? Because of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we should be the example for our world. We should be like a lighthouse on the shore of Beacon in a dark world. Will they see a stand out above anything else? They should look to us and not us. To them, the church is God’s. He owns this church, and we, as his servants are called to be that example to our world who is hurting, and they should see the unity that has held between us. No matter all the differences that we may have between us right now, God is calling us to take that role. He’s calling us, you and me to rise up as leaders wherever you’re at. It doesn’t matter if you have a recognized position of leadership if you’re in your home. If you have roommates at your job in this church to rise up to the position of being a godly leader to display these attributes and through that we will see the world changed. It’s not gonna be because of your personality. It’s not gonna be because of your great skill. It’s gonna because be because of men and women who have submitted themselves to a powerful almighty God who loves people. And so I’m asking you today and I’m convinced more than ever today, God has given us an opportunity to change our world for Jesus Christ. And I’m asking you, toe step forward and to rise up to be the leader God has called you to be. Amen. Lord Jesus, We thank you for today Lord, we love you and we do. We give our lives to you, Lord. I pray that we would be men and women who would step forward, who would enter and engage in these difficult conversations and make tough decisions and love people to serve them to be showing humility. And, lord, that people would look in at the church and say they have the answer. We don’t and Lord, that people’s hearts would turn to you that they would get saved and that your message would change the world. Lord, we love you and we thank you, Amen.