He is my rock, invincible, strong. He punishes all who perpetrate wrong. Our God will repay them for sins they have sworn. But He will have mercy and love for His own. Let us turn to our scripture reading for this morning's 1 Samuel chapter 12, page 298, and most of the Pew Bibles. We are still in, location-wise, Gilgal, where they went for the renewal of the kingdom at the end of chapter 11. In many ways, 12 just builds right off of that. whereas chapter 13, we might say, begins a whole new section. And so here at Gilgal, after the great victory over the Ammonites, after the renewal of the kingdom, the kind of further confirmation of Saul as king, Samuel now gives what's sometimes called a farewell address, not because Samuel is totally departing the scene, the farewell of the time of the judges. In many ways, Samuel will operate as a prophet, assisting the kings and sometimes confronting the kings from this point forward. This is the farewell to his time as a judge and to the time of all the judges. And so that takes us 1 Samuel chapter 12, we will read, all the verses 1 through 25. And Samuel said to all Israel, Behold, I have obeyed your voice in all that you have said to me and have made a king over you. And now, behold, the king walks before you, and I am old and gray, and behold, my sons are with you. I have walked before you from my youth until this day. Here I am. Testify against me before the Lord and before His anointed. Whose ox have I taken? Whose donkey have I taken? Or whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed? Or from whose hand have I taken a bribe to blind my eyes with it? Testify against me and I will restore it to you." They said, you have not defrauded us or oppressed us or taken anything from any man's hand. And he said to them, the Lord is witness against you. And his anointed is witness that this day that you have not found anything in my hand. And they said, he is witness. And Samuel said to the people, The Lord is witness who appointed Moses and Aaron and brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt. Now, therefore, stand still that I may plead with you before the Lord concerning all the righteous deeds of the Lord that he performed for you and for your fathers. When Jacob went into Egypt and the Egyptians oppressed them, then your fathers cried out to the Lord and the Lord sent Moses and Aaron who brought your fathers out of Egypt and made them dwell in this place. but they forgot the Lord their God. And he sold them into the hand of Sisera, commander of the army of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand of the king of Moab, and they fought against them. And they cried out to the Lord and said, we have sinned because we have forsaken the Lord and have served the Baals and the Asheroth, but now deliver us out of the hand of our enemies that we may serve you. And the Lord sent Jeroboam, and Barak, and Jephthah, and Samuel, and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and you lived in safety. And when you saw that Nahash, the king of the Ammonites, came against you, you said to me, No, but a king shall reign over us, when the Lord your God was your king. And now behold the king whom you have chosen, for whom you have asked. Behold, the Lord has set a king over you, If you will fear the Lord and serve Him, and obey His voice and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, and if both you and the King who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, it will be well. But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you and your King. Now, therefore, stand still and see this great thing that the Lord will do before your eyes. Is it not wheat harvest today? I will call upon the Lord that He may send thunder and rain, and you shall know and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in the sight of the Lord in asking for yourselves a king." So Samuel called upon the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day. And all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel. And all the people said to Samuel, Pray for your servants, the Lord your God, that we may not die. For we have added to all our sins this evil to ask for ourselves a king. And Samuel said to the people, do not be afraid. You have done all this evil yet. Do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty. For the Lord will not forsake His people for His great namesake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for Himself. Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you. and I will instruct you in the good and right way. Only fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart, for consider what great things He has done for you. But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your King." So far the reading of the Holy Word of the Lord our God. Dear congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, does, if you've looked at the sermon title, semper reformanda mean? Well, it's a Latin phrase and the translation is the rest of our sermon title. It simply means always reforming. But we can then ask, well, what does always reforming mean? And does this mean then that the word of God can change, we have to be always reforming. Does this mean that we as a church should always be reforming and changing as many little details of our worship as we can just for the sake of change? Does it mean things like this? No. No, it shouldn't mean anything like that. Robert Godfrey, he wrote a nice little article some time ago for Ligonier about this little phrase. Look up and read that five-minute article. It's called, What Does Semper Reformanda Mean? And there he speaks about how the pastor who, as far as we know, first used this phrase was Jodicus van Lodenstein. He was born just after the Synod of Dort in 1620. And Godfrey stresses, argues that this pastor meant it as a way for us to think of living always faithfully. And so I'm gonna read this summary from Robert Godfrey, quote, the part of religion that always needs reforming is the human heart. It is vital religion and true faith that must be constantly cultivated. So what did Van Lodenstein mean by his famous phrase, reformed and always reforming? Probably something like this, let us always be working to ensure that our hearts and lives are being reformed by the word and spirit of God. And people of God, in our text today, in this farewell by Samuel to his judgeship and the time of the judges. That's the pattern that we see. We are to acknowledge our sins, confess them before God, return to God. We are also to be always returning to God, reforming our lives and living faithfully before the face of God. And so that is our theme. this morning, may we return and always be returning to God. And even our five points reflect that Samuel is speaking about how we are going to be continuing forward. And so we see that in point two and point five, a way onward and then a way forward. But we also have a word to hear, a word to fear, and a time to confess as we work through these verses. So first a word to hear Samuel begins. He's speaking to the army of Israel. They've just won this great victory. at Jabesh Gilead. He's brought them across the river again. They've renewed the kingdom at the end of chapter 11. And just as we spoke of a couple weeks ago, we might think, well, this is a time to celebrate. This is a time to just focus on celebration. And indeed, they are celebrating. They're offering the sacrifice of peace. But when there are unaddressed sins, those should be confronted. And so Samuel, even in this midst of giving thanks, even in this celebration for great victory, he's going to return to this need to hear, to listen, and to repent. And he doesn't just tell them to listen to him in a vacuum. He builds up his credentials. He says, I have been before you my whole life. And that might make us think back to the first chapters and the young boy, Samuel, serving in the temple and wearing the linen ephod. And he says, I now have gray hairs. My sons are now your contemporaries. I am now an old man. You've seen my whole life. And what is my life? He says, it's a life of consistent faithfulness. Bring any charge against me from all of these years. Can you do it? They cannot. They cannot. He is speaking to them with the voice of consistent faithfulness. People of God, a life of steadfast, faithful service to God is a wonderful thing. Through the temptations of youth, the struggles and temptations of middle age, the pain of old age, to remain steadfast in service to God is a beautiful thing. It's the kind of consistent life which we should all seek after. It's those who live in such a way who we should be quick to listen to. So we can pause and turn this into two questions. First, are you seeking to live a steadfast life of service to God through all the seasons of your life? If you haven't started, start now. If you have begun a life of faithfulness, continue in steadfast faithfulness through all the seasons of your life. Second, are you listening to the voices of those who live in such a way? There are so many voices today. You can find a voice that says anything you want. You can turn on the radio and find a voice that says anything you want. You can go to YouTube and find a voice that says anything you want. You can go to your friends and find a friend who will say anything you want them to say. But what voices are you listening to? Are you listening to the voices of those who have steadfast records? who seek to faithfully serve God, whose life shows that? Now, Samuel is not simply trustworthy because of his own faithfulness. No, no. Much more importantly, he is a faithful voice because he speaks in the name of the Lord. And the Lord is perfectly faithful. And so if we are to expand the question just a little bit, are you listening to faithful voices who are directing you to the one completely faithful Lord God and His holy word? If you have a friend who would never open the Bible with you, it's probably not a friend who you should listen to. So he gives a record, a brief reminder of some of the major events of God's faithfulness in the past, and he works through that in verses 6 to 11. And to bring it all together, it's something like this. You are witness that I have been faithful. We know that the witness of God is faithful, and yet you weren't patient in his timing. That's the implication, even as Samuel will make his rebuke even more clearly stated in the verses to come. But what's the way onward then? This is the introduction for Samuel's speech, a powerful reminder that the people should hear his word as the faithful prophet of the eternally faithful God. And he's now getting clearer in his rebuke in verse 12. And you saw Nahash, the king of the Ammonites, And instead of thinking about the fact that you have a faithful God who's delivered you, despite the fact that He's raised up judges, including my faithful judgeship in your own lifetime, yet you were not trusting in Him. And you said, we need a King to take care of this. That's what is implied, even as verse 17 will make it so direct. And so we might say from 12 and 13, this is what you have done, you shouldn't have done it. And now, verse 13, behold, the king is before you. And so then 14 and 15 are what? They're the now what? Well, now what do we do? You've done what you shouldn't have done, verses 12, and all that leads up to it. You shouldn't have asked for a king like the nations. Now you have a king, God gave you a king. Verse 13, verses 14 and 15, now what? Now what? People of God, how many now what moments do we face in our spiritual life? We're going to face many of them. Now what? What do we do? We stumbled. We fell. We didn't trust God and His timing as we should have done. And so we asked for a king when we shouldn't have. Now we have a king. How can we move onward? Now what are we going to do? Now what? In short, Samuel's answer is, live faithfully from this point forward. Remember the question, are you seeking to live a life of faithful service through all the seasons of your life? I hope by God's grace the answer is yes. If you know that you are not living in faithfulness to God, the answer to the now what question, what happens now that I've stumbled, now that I haven't trusted God as I should, the answer is, well, stop now in your tracks, repent, and from this moment forward live faithfully and steadfastly before God. And so what are the repeated words of verses 14 and 15? Obedience and rebellion. Move onward in obedience and away from rebellion. If you and the king do this, it will be well with you. So the voice of the faithful prophet is directing them to obedience to God. And he's going to yet further confirm his point. It's a word to fear. verses 16 to 18, it's a word to fear. Samuel knows that the Israelites will best be able to move onward in faithfulness if they fully realize their sins and can confess the sins of their past. And so he reminds them, now he makes it very clear, he's been hinting at it, but now in verse 17 he says it straight out. Your desire for a king was great wickedness. Your desire for a king was great wickedness. Now let's pause here for a moment. We might think that this sin is not such a terrible sin. They just wanted a king. They wanted a king when Nahash was marching through Gilead tearing down the two and a half tribes on the other side of the river. They wanted a king, which God had told them they would have eventually. So what's the big deal? They knew they were gonna have a king eventually. Doesn't this look like a moment when they should have one? What's the big deal? People of God, as one pastor said it, there is a hidden idolatry in the people of Israel at this moment. They wanted a king like the nations. We return to that phrase again. They are not waiting on God and his timing. There is a hidden idolatry here. The kind of thing that we might be tempted to say is no big deal. And there are many things in our life where we are tempted to say it's no big deal, but hidden idolatries are great wickedness. And so there's a word to fear. It's either gonna be miraculously confirmed. Now, we might think, what's the big deal about thunder during harvest time? We get thunder during harvest time. Well, this is Wisconsin. Samuel speaking in Israel. In Israel, the weather's a lot different than it is here. In Israel, by the time you get to harvest, the rainy season is long gone. The weather is hot, dry, predictable, and boring. There's no rain, there's no thunder. This is unheard of. It's the equivalent of us getting a 10-inch snowstorm in the middle of July. And I think even our children know we don't get 10-inch snowstorms in the middle of July. Well that's what thunder in the dry season, the harvest time of Israel is. And so Samuel saying this word that you have committed great wickedness is going to be confirmed. Now If you're feeling like this is something which, you know, hold on, I've been sitting here through this sermon on Samuel. Haven't we talked about this a little bit before? Well, yes, we have. Samuel gave this warning in chapter eight, verses 10 to 18 at Ramah. Samuel gave this warning again in 10, verse 19 at Mizpah. And now he's giving it again here at Gilgal in chapter 12. And now he's finally going to confirm it even with a miraculous sign. And that taking us into our fourth point is when the people will finally respond well. They had to be told at least three times in three different places, from Rama to Mispa to Gilgal. They had to be shaken by a miraculous lightning bolt of God in the dry season. But at last, they give a good verbal confession of sin. They acknowledge their general sinfulness and they specifically acknowledge the sin of desiring a king for themselves. It is a good confession of sin at last. People of God, how many times as either the hearer or the speaker do we have to either say things at least three times or hear things at least three times. It's frustrating for Samuel as the speaker. It's frustrating for the hearer who perhaps thinks, I don't need to really hear this again, do I? But people of God, whenever a faithful voice is pointing out our sins to us, let us hear it. And let us hear it before a lightning bolt is necessary. If God will even give a lightning bolt, if it's coming from all sides, if every voice is telling us, no, you must address these things, let's be sure that with the word of God, we are hearing and we are confessing a good confession, such as the one here in verse 19. And then a good confession can be followed by these words, do not be afraid. the beginning of verse 20. Brothers and sisters, we serve the same God that the Israelites of old served. We must repent of all our sins. We must return to God. We must return from all of our idolatries, whether they're visible or hidden. We must come and confess our sins. And then in confession, in true confession, We can also hear, do not be afraid, and we know that even more gloriously. Do not be afraid. Jesus Christ himself bore the penalty for your sins on the cross. If you trust in him, his death by crucifixion gives you life. May we never think that repentance is a small thing, that everything will just be fine if we can go on living in unrepentant sin. This is what Jesus had to die on the cross for. And this is what should be exposed even by repeated admonition of faithful servants. And it's not just Old Testament matters. Jesus Christ speaks many times in the New Testament about the need to walk out of rebellion and into trust for God. Let's read from Matthew chapter 7, the wonderful imagery of the illustration there of the house on the rock versus the house on the sand. Matthew chapter 7 beginning with verse 24. Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it. Standing on the rock with confession of sin, do not be afraid. Standing anywhere else, may you be afraid. But notice that even in those New Testament words, Jesus speaks twice about, and does them, or and does not do them, which brings us to our fifth point. Our fifth point, a way forward. Brothers and sisters in Christ, hear this. A good verbal confession of sin does not end the matter. Do you see that? Do you see that Samuel is going to drive his point home? You cannot just say, Lord God, I confess all my sins before you. That is not enough. That is the starting point. That is where we begin. That is something we must do. But true confession of sin is going to be followed with obedience. It is a sad deception of the soul when anyone would ever think that it's not necessary to confess our sins before the thrice holy God. It's an equally sad deception of the soul and perhaps a more hidden deception when someone would say that a well said verbal confession of sin is all that's necessary. Yes, Samuel says, do not be afraid. But that's not the last word that the faithful prophet Samuel says. Let's work quickly through, point by point, the kinds of things that Samuel says. He says, yes, do not be afraid. But then he continues in the very rest of that verse. And he reminds the Israelites that, yes, you've done evil, but now move forward in obedience, serving God with all your heart. And then verse 21 could so easily be its own sermon. It's a reminder that to serve anything else is to serve empty things. But then moving to verse 22, he'll bring it back to the heart of the message, which is the covenant faithfulness of God. And that's where we look, and we look again and see the faithfulness of God. But then in verse 23, a heartfelt word from Samuel, that he will always pray for them. And note that not praying for others is a sin. And then in number six, to drive the point home, to be sure that real repentance includes a changed behavior, he gives yet another reminder to serve God faithfully. And finally, a last warning in verse 25. People of God, this all makes it abundantly clear that a good verbal confession is a good starting point, but it is not an ending point. We are to return to God and to always be returning, living faithfully, seeking to serve steadfastly God. We can illustrate this. Children, hopefully you know that it's not only what you say and how you start things, but also how you finish. Let's pick a simple illustration from the home. Mommy asks you to pick up a toy and put it away. You say, okay mommy, that's a good start. You still need to go pick it up and then you still need to go put it away. Well, this is just a small illustration of the important word of saying God, I am a sinner before you, but it does not end there. We must move forward in faithfulness. When we do, we rejoice that God is faithful and just, that he will even remove our sins as far as the east is from the west. So when we've confessed, we don't wallow in the past sin of asking for a king. We don't get stuck there. We move forward, but we move forward with holy fear and reverence. But then the returned and always returning sinner can come to God and say, I know you remove my sins for me. And in seeking to serve you faithfully, I rejoice in your faithfulness, which is also so emphasized here as it is so emphasized the grace of God through every page of the word of God. And we say then. Let the bread and the wine strengthen me. More than the lightning bolts could ever frighten me, even as I'd want the lightning bolts to show me all of my need to confess and live righteously. Come to the table with forgiven sins, taste and see that the Lord is good as a repentant and constantly returning, seeking to live faithfully, servant of God. Amen. Let us pray. Lord, Our Lord, you are faithful and just to forgive us our sins. Show us, Lord, that we need to not only repent but also to live always faithfully before you. But with such a