In chapter 10, we pick up right where we left off in chapter 9, where Samuel had met with the future king Saul.
And if you remember, he had sat up with him on the house.
First he'd given him a much bigger portion at dinner and told him that everything was prepared for him,
and he went through all that last week.
And where we picked up the story right now in chapter 10 is where he tells the servant to go on ahead,
and Samuel just wants to speak with Saul in private alone, just as Saul is leaving to go home.
He says in verse 1 of chapter 10,
Then Samuel took a vial of oil, and poured it upon his head, and kissed him, and said,
Is it not because the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain over his inheritance?
When thou art departed from me today, and thou shalt find two men by Rachel's sepulchre in the border of Benjamin and Selah,
and they will say unto thee, The asses which thou wentest to seek are found.
And lo, thy father had left care of the asses, and sorrowed for you, saying, What shall I do for my son?
Then shalt thou go all forward from this, and thou shalt come to the plain of Tabor,
and there shall meet thee three men going up to God to bedthale, one carrying three loaves,
and another carrying three loaves of bread, and another carrying a bottle of wine.
So he's basically describing to him these different things that are these signs that are going to take place.
He's just predicting everything that's going to happen on the way home,
just so that Saul will basically know that Samuel's telling him the truth,
just as evidence that he knows what he's talking about,
and these are signs that will prove to Saul that what Samuel's saying is true.
Now it's interesting, in the first verse he took a vial of oil and poured it on his head.
Now this is something that we see all throughout the Bible,
people being anointed with oil on the head,
the priests were always anointed with oil to do their job,
also their ear would be anointed with oil,
the tip of their right ear, their right thumb and the great toe on their right foot,
and the oil in the Bible represents basically the Holy Spirit.
The Bible talks about being anointed with oil,
but in the New Testament, he says, for example, in 1 John 2,
But the anointing which he had received of him abided in you,
and you need not that any man teach you anything,
but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things,
and his truth and his no life,
and even as it hath taught you, you shall abide in him.
So throughout the New Testament, the Bible talks about us being anointed with the Holy Spirit,
and the Bible talks about it in the Old Testament.
The anointing oil was just a physical representation of someone spiritually having the Spirit of the Lord upon them,
and we see later on, it's going to say the Spirit of the Lord came upon Saul,
and later after that when David is anointed with oil,
it says from that day forward, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him.
So being anointed with oil is a picture of being filled with the Spirit,
and it's very important for anyone who's going to be a leader,
anybody who's a king, a preacher, a prophet, a pastor,
anyone needs to be filled with the Spirit,
needs to have the Spirit of the Lord God upon them,
and not to do it in the flesh, and that's what we see here with Saul.
It says in verse number 4, it continues this narrative of all the things that are going to happen to them on the way home.
And they will salute thee, and give thee two loaves of bread, which thou shalt receive of their hands.
After that, thou shalt come to the hill of God,
where is the garrison of the Philistines,
and it shall come to pass, when thou art come thither to this city,
that thou shalt need a company of prophets,
coming down from the high place with a psaltery, and a taproot, and a pipe, and a heart before them,
and they shall prophesy, and the Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee,
and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man.
Now keep your finger here, and go to Ephesians chapter 5,
in the New Testament, Ephesians chapter 5,
because while we're talking about being filled with the Holy Spirit,
or having the Spirit of the Lord God upon you,
the Bible talks about the same thing in Ephesians chapter 5,
and it says in verse number 18, Ephesians 5, 18,
And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit,
speaking to yourselves in songs and hymns and spiritual songs,
singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.
Now, the Bible's telling us here not to be drunk with wine,
but to be filled with the Spirit,
and then he says one of the ways that we're going to be filled with the Spirit
is by speaking to ourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
Now notice in 1 Samuel 10, when these men come upon these prophets,
notice music is involved.
It says that they have a psaltery, a taproot, a pipe, and a heart,
and it says the Spirit of the Lord was upon them,
and then when Saul would get in that group,
the Spirit of the Lord would come upon him as well,
and he would prophesy or preach with them.
So we see the importance of music when it comes to being filled with the Spirit.
Now, if singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs
has to do with us being filled with God's Spirit
or having God's Spirit come upon us,
doesn't that make you wonder, what is the world's music doing to you?
I mean, think about that.
What kind of a Spirit?
The Bible talks about the Spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.
And you know, when you have these bands and these singers
that are very ungodly,
and many of them are just openly hateful toward Christianity,
they're openly hateful toward God and religion and righteousness,
what Spirit is involved with that music that they're singing?
And what kind of an unclean Spirit are you involving yourself with
when you're listening to Metallica or ACDC, Ozzy Osbourne,
whatever it is, and those are just the maybe extreme examples
of the really dark music or heavy metal, the Nine Inch Nails,
or Lady Gaga, is that the Spirit of Christ?
Is that songs and hymns and spiritual songs?
Or Weezer and Nirvana and Jimi Hendrix and The Cure
or whatever you're into.
The bottom line is that God's Spirit is there
when the right music is being sung.
And when we sing the hymns in church, there's a reason why we do that.
We don't just do that because it's just tradition.
Or do us, it's what we've always done.
We sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs
because we want to have the right Spirit
as we get ready to listen to God's Word being preached.
We want to go into that with the right Spirit.
We want to go into that filled with the Spirit of God
and not having the Spirit of this world dominating in our hearts and lives.
And so we see music mentioned, and it says in verse 6
that when they come to him, when he gets into this group,
the Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee,
and thou shalt prophesy with them,
and shall be turned into another man.
Now go to Acts chapter 4.
Keep your finger in verse 10, of course,
but go to Acts chapter 4.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts.
In Acts chapter 4, this is, of course,
the early church in Jerusalem,
and Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.
This is after the day of the Pentecost and so forth.
And it says in Acts chapter 4 and verse number 29,
And now, Lord, this is the apostles praying to God,
and they're saying, And now, Lord, behold their threatenings,
and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness
they may speak the word.
So what are they praying?
They're praying that they could preach the word with boldness,
that they could go out soul winning.
It says in chapter 5, verse 42,
And daily in the temple and in every house
they cease not to teach and preach Jesus' prayer.
They're praying to have the boldness
to not be afraid of their threatenings,
to not be afraid of the beatings and getting thrown in jail
and things that they're being threatened with,
but rather that they would preach and speak
God's word with boldness.
They're praying for boldness.
Look what it says in the next scripture there.
It says in verse 30,
By stretching forth thy hand to heal,
and that signs and wonders may be done
by the name of thy holy child Jesus.
Verse 31,
And when they had prayed,
the place was shaken where they were assembled together,
and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost,
and they spayed the word of God with boldness.
Go back to chapter 2, just a few pages back,
of course, the day of Pentecost.
It says in verse 4,
Acts chapter 2, verse 4,
And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost,
and began to speak with other tongues
as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Now there were 120 people there,
according to Acts chapter 1,
and the Bible says both places,
both in chapter 2 and in chapter 4,
that they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.
Now think about that.
Do you really think that all 120 people
were all exactly the same?
Or that they were all at the same level of spiritual growth?
Or that they were all, had been saved
for the same amount of time?
That they were all living about the same degree
of righteousness in their life?
Now everybody's different.
You know, there are different people
at different stages, different levels.
Some of the people in that group,
I'll tell you for sure, were newly saved.
Because if you remember,
Jesus Christ's half-brothers,
you know, James and Judas and Joseph and Simon,
they didn't believe on him
until after he's risen from the dead, okay?
And they were there at that group.
So they were just newly saved.
Other people that are in that group
have been saved for many years.
Jesus' mother was in that group.
Mary, and she'd been saved for a very long time, decades.
And so there were all different levels of people,
but by being in that group,
they were, what?
All filled with the Holy Ghost.
Now, we see the same thing in 1 Samuel chapter 10.
Saul is going along,
and when he gets in that group,
when he gets in that group of prophets,
the Bible said that the Spirit of the Lord
would come upon him also.
So the Spirit of the Lord was already
upon that group of prophets in 1 Samuel 10.
When Saul comes to them,
the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him also,
and he begins to prophesy with them.
Now, he had never preached,
from what we see in the scripture.
I mean, people are shocked.
When they see Saul preaching,
it blew them away.
They say, is Saul also among the prophets?
Is that Saul that's preaching?
You know, I've been out soul-wining with people,
and do you ever go out soul-wining
and you knock on the door
of somebody that you've known in the past?
Like, somebody that's an old friend,
or has that ever happened to you?
An old coworker?
Put up your hand if that's happened to you.
You know, a coworker,
or somebody that you used to go to school with.
You know, you run into somebody,
and they're like, what are you doing here?
You know, you're there with the Bible,
and you're soul-wining,
and they're like, huh? You?
You know, some people could be like that,
because they're just surprised
in the change that has taken place in you,
maybe from when they knew you a long time ago.
And now you're coming to their door,
and you're preaching,
and some people hear about the fact
that I'm pastoring now.
You know, people that I haven't talked to in decades.
Wow, you're a pastor?
You?
And that's the way it was with Saul,
because Saul had never preached before.
Now, do you think that Saul woke up that morning
thinking, I'm going to be preaching later today?
No.
No way.
He's basically just going along.
He gets in that group with the other prophets.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon them.
The Spirit of the Lord comes upon him also,
and he preaches with them.
Now, don't let the word prophesy throw you off.
A lot of people are trying to say
prophesy means to predict the future.
Now, that is simply not true.
The word prophesy in the Bible just means to preach.
And to prove that, in Proverbs 31,
it says the words of King Lemuel,
the prophecy that his mother taught,
and there's no prediction there of the future.
It's just Bible preaching, okay?
And so prophesy just means to preach.
And so it's not that they were predicting future events.
Now, some preaching, if you're preaching
out of the book of Revelation or something,
yeah, you're predicting some future events there
through God's word.
But any time you preach God's word, you're prophesying,
even if it has nothing to do with some kind of a prediction.
You're just preaching forth God's word.
That's prophesying.
Now, this reminds me of the time,
or many times I could tell you about,
where someone, I've seen someone visit our church.
They've never been to our church before.
They came to church.
They joined the service
and literally just went out soul-witting the same day.
We just, like, they'd never thought,
they'd never been soul-witting,
didn't know anything about soul-witting,
and we just said,
hey, come soul-witting with us this afternoon.
And we've taken people
who didn't think they were going to do that this morning.
You know, they showed up and came to church,
and boom, they're out soul-witting that afternoon.
And, you know, that's the right kind of church,
where you get in a church
and basically you begin to prophesy with them.
You know, you begin to get out there
and preach the Word and go soul-witting.
Maybe if you're a woman, obviously,
you know, you're not preaching by the pulpit.
You know, you'd be out door to door,
like the ladies of our church do.
They go out and get the gospel
and preach the gospel to people,
get people saved at the door.
And, you know, some of you guys
that are preaching this Saturday night
at the preaching class,
I bet you there was probably a time in your life
when you thought, you know,
I would never do that.
I can't see myself getting behind the pulpit
and preaching the Bible.
But yet you will be there
at that company of prophets on Saturday night
preaching the gospel and preaching the Word of God
with the Holy Spirit upon you, hopefully,
as you preach.
This is what the importance of a church is.
Because if you're in the right group,
it can affect you personally.
It can affect you on an individual basis.
If you were there,
if I were there in Acts chapter 2 and Acts 4,
we probably would have had
the Spirit of God upon us, too,
because they were all, you know,
hopefully it wouldn't have said like, you know,
well, everyone accepts so-and-so.
Maybe we would have been there.
You know what I mean?
But the chances are if we would have been there, man,
we would have been filled with the Spirit, too.
We would have been speaking with boldness, too.
Why? Because that's the group we're in.
That's what the people around us were doing.
And so it's important to be at the right church.
You get in a church that's a dead church,
you're not going to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
You're not going to be out stolen.
You're not going to be preaching.
Why? Because their bad spirit
is going to rub off on you.
You know, you've got to be filled with the Spirit.
And go to a church that has the Spirit of God
in power and presence at that church.
And that's what we see here where Saul came to this group.
Now, here's something I really want to point out doctrinally.
At the end of verse 6, it says,
And shall be turned into another man.