In this sermon, the speaker discusses the story of David and Samuel in 1 Samuel chapter 16. He emphasizes that God has an appointment and a work for each person, just as He did for David. The speaker also highlights the importance of the anointing of the Holy Spirit in fulfilling this work. He gives an example of a woman named Susie who, despite not having positional authority, is appointed by God and anointed with the Holy Spirit to do a powerful work of the gospel in Cambodia. Through her and her team's efforts, 50 Cambodians were converted to Christianity in just one year.

We're going to pray in just a moment. If you saw me walking in and just thought, wow, was Stuart that late? I was actually up doing a welcome brunch for folks that are new to Res. And speaking of welcome, how glad I am to be welcomed back after three weeks of mission, two weeks in Southeast Asia, another week up at Honey Rock Camp in partnership with Wheaton College, and then a week of vacation that we fit in between those. I'm so happy. To be back here. It always feels like home, but it especially feels like home today. So, let's pray as we convert to study God's Word together. Father in heaven, we now ask that your Word, your eternal Word, your living Word, would now come to us right here. Lord, we pray that you would minister the teaching of Scripture. Lord, we pray that you would minister and that we would be able to receive humbly all that you have for us from 1 Samuel 16. And we ask that you would teach us out of 1 and 2 Samuel throughout this summer, that we would become familiar and understand these books in the Bible. And also, Lord, let them guide us. Let them change us. Let them, Lord, do a deep work of the Holy Spirit in us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. You may be seated. A few weeks ago now, I had the chance, sent actually by the Diocese of Singapore, they brought me to Singapore and took advantage with that invitation to also spend time in Cambodia, where we have a family very near and dear to Rez's heart, kind of son and daughter of Rez, Father Gregory and Dr. Heidi Whitaker and their four children. I had a chance to be with them in Cambodia for several days. And during that time in Cambodia, I had a chance to meet, as I often do when I get to travel overseas, a most remarkable Christian. I want to tell you something about her because actually her life and what she is doing now in God so connects with the life of David and what we see God doing in David's life in our text today. Her name is Susie. She is in her 50s, a single woman, Singaporean. And Susie has been met profoundly by the power of God in her later life. It was in her 40s when she actually converted to Christ. And out of that conversion and out of a call on her life, she has helped to found a ministry called Project Cambodia Hope or Project My Hope. We drove up to this work. It is in the middle of provinces or a state that is a rural area. And as you drive up to it, you kind of driven through many different villages and a significantly impoverished area. And in the middle of this is Project Cambodia Hope, which is this kind of living beacon to the work of the Holy Spirit in a country that is 95 percent Buddhist and a fraction, a teeny tiny splinter fraction Christian. And Susie runs this kind of vocational training school, which is that. And as I will explain so much more, she received only a conversion from Christ, but an appointment from God to be sent out from Singapore for one of the most sort of beautiful, most amazingly run, absolutely clean, more developed than Chicago cultures into one of the most impoverished cultures in all Southeast Asia. And there, she runs Project Cambodia Hope, where villagers who have never seen a can of soup, right? They've never seen a box of cereal, are brought in and given an opportunity by Susie, who led all of hospitality for the foremost airlines in the world, Singapore Airlines. And they are taught how to do the work of hospitality. They're taught by the chief stewardess, who was Susie at one point, of Singapore Airlines, how to work within the industry, how to work within the hospitality industry. And those who would have no opportunity to do anything but day in and day out survival are given vocational skills and connected with the absolutely blossoming hospitality industry in Phnom Penh. It is a miracle to behold. I use no hyperbole when I describe Susie as a kind of Cambodian Mother Teresa, who is lifting people up out of the most desperate poverty, instilling them with the dignity of work and more. We had a chance to tour and see the different classrooms and the places in which the students are taught. And they actually have developed a whole kind of area that is like a hotel. For example, there's a hotel room. You're taught how to make a bed in a certain amount of time. There's a sort of hotel registration desk, taught how to receive a guest at the hotel. It's all very, very specific and very, very focused. She's been appointed to this work. But as you walk around, you begin to get a feeling there's more going on than just a very talented woman who's leading this. You see that there's not only an appointment, but there's an anointing. There's a spirit of joy that pervades this whole entire community of about 50 Cambodians. There's an effectiveness to this, where every single one has gone through this, is placed in a particular job in Phnom Penh, begins to earn money they never even dreamed was possible, and send it back to their families. And then she began to explain to us that because Cambodia is still very open and highly Buddhistic, they are very free to share the gospel. And share the gospel they do. There's an anointing on her work and the work of her team to bring others to Christ who have never, ever even known the word Jesus existed. Last year, in one year, 50 Cambodians converted at Project Camaiho. And I walked around and I just was amazed at what I saw. This woman raised up, converted, and then from that conversion, with all the gifts she had, appointed to a work of the gospel, not ordained, with no positional authority within the greater diocese of Singapore where she's been sent. And yet utterly and completely locked in to a work of the gospel. I want to talk this morning about what we see in the life of David and the life of Samuel in 1 Samuel chapter 16, where we see that in God, God brings an appointment. God has an appointment. He has a work. Yes, in this case it's for David, but as I'll explain, it spreads out beyond a David to all those who will walk in Christ. He has an appointment, and when he appoints, then he anoints with the work of the Holy Spirit. He raises up, he gives assignments, and then the wind of the Holy Spirit blows in on that work and makes that work greater than it ever could be. Susie, as gifted as she is, and she's very gifted, could never convert 50 people on her own. She could never create job placement like she's created for all those who graduate from Project My Hope. There's something more happening there, and if you will be open to the power of the Holy Spirit and the appointment God has given you, there's something more that can be happening here for you. Can you articulate your appointment? That may be a long-term appointment from God, or maybe just what's your summer appointment from God? What's your seasonal, life seasonal appointment? Can you articulate it, and then are you living and obeying that appointment in such a way that anointing is coming? God appoints, the Holy Spirit anoints. Verses 6 to 12, God's appointing. Let's look at that in this text this morning in 1 Samuel, and then verse 13, God's anointing. Prior to verse 6, we've got a narrative around Samuel, who is a prophet known as the last judge of Israel. Now we're in a time of Israel where they're transitioning from a judge who provided some kind of rulership, but wasn't called king, because God was very clear, I am the king of Israel. Israel's now asked for a king. I believe we studied that last week. So we have a transition into kingship, and Samuel's been told to go and anoint a new king, because Saul has been assessed in his kingship and has been found profoundly wanting, and God not only appoints, he also assesses when someone has come to disobedience against his way. So Samuel's told, go make a new king, and Samuel's terrified, because if Saul discovers that Samuel's going to make a new king, Saul would have no problem whatsoever slaughtering him, in probably a very creative and gruesome way. Saul has a profound, violent personality that Samuel has seen. So Samuel says, no, please, don't ask me to go make a new king, but God says, you must go do it, and Samuel obeys, and he goes forward, and he begins to look at who he thinks might make a good king. Like any of us, he's at first judging books by their covers. Hard day for the seven brothers of David at one level. Verse seven, we read, the Lord says to Samuel, and Samuel's kind of taking this in, do not look at their appearance or on the height of his stature. I have rejected him, speaking of the oldest of David's brothers. They'll go through all the brothers. Now, just real quickly, that rejection is not a personal thing. Often when we think rejection in our culture, we think, ooh, rejection, that's personal. This is more objective. This is more, this is not the man I have for this work. Doesn't mean that this man wasn't necessarily appointed for a work. This is not the one I've appointed for this work. That's what rejection means there. Goes through all the brothers, because God is appointing one. God appoints his people. That's very important. We are instruments of his appointing. We help discern his appointing, but God appoints you, which means you answer to God first for his appointment. There are at least three ways, biblically, that we see God making appointments. One is positional, and that's what we're very aware of in our culture and in our day. They're just positional leadership roles. You have a title of a leader. You have a title of a manager. You're in some kind of positional leadership role. That's a common way that we see leadership played out. It can be both supernatural or just natural. It's just how it works, just positional leadership. Then we see spiritual leadership gifts. Those are very specific, talked about primarily in the New Testament, and those are for a few. Not everybody has God's specific spiritual leadership gift. Those are for some. It's called the gift of governance, spiritual leadership. But to understand what God is saying to Samuel, we must understand what happens in Genesis. It then comes to fulfillment on the day of Pentecost. In the book of Genesis, we are told in the first chapter, right after the creation of humanity, that God made male and female in his image. Immediately after that, right after that, God says, go and be fruitful and multiply. And after that, God says, and have dominion over creation. What God is saying is, I have made you in my image, and there is a creational appointment that is for all men and women. I appreciate you may say, I don't have a specific leadership gift. Well, that may be accurate, and that's another teaching. What I'm talking about here is God's appointment through his image and the redemption of his image for those who come to Christ that are for everyone. We have any question about that? We're then told that God pours his spirit out on everyone, that his appointment goes to all Christians, because his anointing goes to all Christians, and that none are kept from that. Indeed, all are called into that, everyone, in a creational appointment that's founded in the image of God and are called to have dominion, to have some kind of ministry leadership in the work of the kingdom of God that's for everyone. God appoints. Now, when he appoints, we read, verse 7, that he appoints the heart. He looks on the heart. Very important that we don't just think feelings at that point. Again, contextually, heart has to do with the inner person, the will, the feelings, the intellect. They're all wrapped up in that word heart when it's used in this context. God is looking on the person, and he's looking on the person in Christ are those who have submitted to Christ. That's the heart God looks on, that he says, those who have submitted to Christ, they not only receive a salvation, they receive an appointment to minister salvation to others. That was what happened in Susie's life. She converts, and after her conversion, someone challenges her and says, take all the giftings you've had and experience you've had at Singapore Airlines. How would God appoint that gift for work of the kingdom? How thankful I am that Susie didn't say, but I'm not ordained, or I don't have a positional leadership title. No one says she went through a discernment process, it became very clear when she was sent to Cambodia to begin this miraculous anointed work. God wanted David for a work. God wanted Susie for a work. God wants you for a work in the kingdom of God. Now, do his appointments always make sense? No, I'm, I'm wondering if somebody's looking at kind of gone, but I'm not the appointment type. I mean, I don't fit the leadership model. Again, maybe you're getting confused with a spiritual leadership call, as opposed to a creational image leadership call, that's for everyone. So I want to make sure you're really clear biblically that there's a distinction there. So maybe you haven't, knowing that you have an appointment, or maybe you're not able to articulate clearly right now your appointments, but God confounds the world with his appointments. God confounds, even in history, apart from speaking specifically about religious history, we see again and again and again, people appointed for a work that logically, naturally, they would never be appointed for. Arguably, one of the best leaders in our history as a country was a man who had absolutely no reason to be elected. Abraham Lincoln was a political failure at one level in terms of election. He was a political genius and was displayed when she actually won an election, which was the presidency, but he had no business winning the presidency. There were three men running against him in the Republican primary that everyone assumed would be one of the three winners. Again and again, not just supernaturally, but even naturally, we're stunned and shocked at who ends up stepping into roles that we thought they didn't fit. Reverend Yang, the only national Cambodian priest in all of Cambodia, Anglican priest, there's one. The way he became a priest is that he actually found his way to an Anglican church, walked in the door, this had never happened, 95% Buddhistic, of the remaining 5%, a splinter are Christians, and said, I want to understand what's happening here. A Western missionary walked Reverend Yang through the process to salvation. He gave his life to the Lord. He was a survivor of 1975 to 1979 Khmer Rouge pogrom, genocide. He survived it, but because he went through that as a child, he had no education. He started kindergarten at age 20. Can you imagine being 20 years old, literally in a converting class? Because he knew God had an appointment on his life. Reverend Yang confounds conventional leadership thinking, but it is an utter conformity to the appointment of God, who looks not on the outward appearance, or the outward achievement, or the outward background, or the outward pedigree, but on the heart. Now that is unbelievably good news, and very challenging news for all of us. It's such a challenge to be appointed, we dare not do it without an anointing. We dare not do an appointment of God without an anointing. Just a moment, we'll talk about anointing. One leader here, one time he was just in a casual conversation, had a beautiful articulation of their appointment. They could just kind of articulate it in a phrase. They had a marketplace job, and they were doing that, and I'm sure they had kind of an articulation of their marketplace call is all, but they're talking about Rev, they said, you know what? I've just been called to serve church and your pastors. I saw my dad do it, it's just what I do. I just serve the church and her pastors. It's like this really quick articulation for them of their appointment. They knew their appointment, and they acted out of their appointment, and they obeyed the appointment God gave them, and there was anointing all over that person. So what is anointing? Okay, literally that word, if you just, that word in its original language in Hebrew means to rub or to smear, and it actually was used originally, so often like a word that takes on a lot of spiritual meaning for us, this had a very original conventional understanding. It was used when you were preparing a shield for battle, for example. Shields were often made of leather then, so you had a leather shield, and you would rub it, you would smear oil on it. Why? So that the shield was protected, so that the shield was prepared, so that the shield was ready, and that word then is used to prepare, to ready, to sort of fully cover, in this case, David, in our case, all of us in Christ, with the ministry and the power of the Holy Spirit, because this idea of anointing and oil was used, which is part of a kind of an outward, visible sign of what we're told in verse 13 is an invisible reality, which is the Spirit of the Lord rushes upon David, verse 13, so that anointing has this literal meaning, rubbing, sort of covering, which is given a spiritual understanding, the rushing in of the Holy Spirit, a phrase used exactly for Saul as well, and they come together, that where there was an appointment by God, so an anointing follows in David's life. Now, that is unbelievably good news for us, because you hear me talking about an appointment, and you feel overwhelmed, or you feel kind of confused, or you feel intimidated, or you feel like you really wish it was for other people and not for yourself, then at least I can give you the very good news that God will not appoint without also anointing. He will bring both together. What is anointing? Martin Lloyd-Jones, the preacher of the Western world, he wrote a lot about anointing, preached a lot about anointing, and in his teaching on anointing, he uses a few adjectives to describe anointing. It's authority, that when you're anointed, you have an authority. It's power. It's an understanding. It's freedom, he says. It's a clarity. What happens in anointing is this. Your influence is greater than your limitations because of the Holy Spirit. When you have an anointing in the Holy Spirit, from the Holy Spirit, your influence is greater than your limitations. The limitations just of having a personality and only be able to do so many things, the limitations of your own natural gifting, the limitations of your sinful nature. This will be playing out in David's life over and over and over again. If you don't understand this about David, you'll find him confusing, because he's oh so sinful, just heartbreakingly sinful at times. He's oh so limited by how he thinks about how a king should work. He's limited by his own culture, his own era. He's limited in so many ways, and yet what we see again and again in David is that there's an anointing that comes from the Holy Spirit that moves his influence way beyond his own limitations. It's like kites I saw when I was in Afghanistan many years ago. And they build these really simple kites with tissue paper and a couple sticks, and then the kids will like put glue and glass on the on the strings, and they'll have kite fights. And with this kite, what you have is something very limited, tissue paper and sticks. But when wind catches that kite, it goes way outside of what it should ever be doing, and they fly all over the place, all over the cityscape. They're absolutely amazing and beautiful and full of wind, and that's how anointing works. It takes us, these like kites with old sticks and tissue paper, and when the wind hits our kite, we go way beyond what we should ever be able to do. That's extremely encouraging and absolutely humbling and very important to know about each other. I had a great experience with a man whose writings have been very anointed in my life. He's now with the Lord. His name is Dr. Dallas Willard. I would open his books and within five pages my heart is pounding. I feel like I was at an athletic event. I was so excited. I was writing all over it. I just would write about the life of Christ and the way of God. It was anointed. It was so powerful, so clarifying, and I was given this chance to give him a ride to the airport. He had given a conference in Wheaton. I was like, I'm going to drive the anointed Dallas Willard to the airport? This is going to be unbelievable. I mean, I had friends pray, don't have an accident. I mean, I'm so excited. I can hardly read the guy's books. Wait till I'm in his actual presence. This is going to be unbelievable. The life-changing event besides meeting Jesus in my life. I had it all keyed up in my head. You know what Dr. Willard was like? Grandpa. A really smart grandpa. He kind of sat there, kind of chatted about things. I mean, I don't know, I think he wanted to talk about gardening or something. I was like, I thought we're talking about like personhood in Christ, and I was transformed. He wanted to talk about I don't know. He was like this normal person. I was so disappointed. He did do a really beautiful thing. He actually left me like $25 for my ministry under receipt. That was kind of cool. What was going on? What always goes on with anointing? We're just people. We're just people with our personalities and our sinful nature. But if we're anointed, our influence extends far beyond our limitations. Moms, dads, if you've been appointed to be a mom or a dad, do you know that you're anointed for that work? And your influence can extend far beyond your limitation. I was in a group of leaders recently. They were giving testimony about generosity in their lives, and three or four of them got up, and it was just super moving, because they told these stories about their moms and their dads, and how generous they were with their money, and how there was this anointing of generosity on their mom or their dad, and how you could just tell that that mom or dad, if I met them would be a very normal person, had an influence and anointing extended beyond their limitation that came to generosity. And now when their kid, 20, 30 years later, got up to talk about their Christian life and talked about them, what a relief it is to know there's anointing that follows an appointment. And what a humbling thing it is. How do you get anointed? Accept your appointment. That's where it starts. Obey your appointment. Anointing comes from obedience. Don't make anointing too mystical. It is mystical, but it starts with obedience, what God has put on our lives. One reason why many of us aren't anointed in some capacity is we didn't know we could be, we didn't know we were appointed, or maybe we even had a sense of appointment, and we didn't want to accept it, or we didn't want it, we didn't want it, or we pushed it away. Samuel's been anointed from ministry, but his anointing and his ability to even anoint David comes out of what? His obedience in the first part of chapter 16, and when God says go, and he doesn't want to go, and it's wrong to go from a natural perspective because he could be killed, he goes. This obedience is bookended because now in the next chapter, David will be asked to obey his father, go feed your brothers. I mean, David could have said, like Joseph did, you know, earlier, I'm special, I don't feed brothers anymore. He's told to go feed your brothers, and ends up leading to him fighting Goliath. Well, how did that anointing get expressed ultimately out of his obedience to his dad? He said, go feed your brothers. Chapter 17, obedience sets the table for the anointing meal of the Holy Spirit. So, I want to ask you, can you articulate your appointments? And then I want to ask you if there's any way that you haven't obeyed your appointments? Because to repent of that, which you can do this morning, and just say, well, what I do and obey what you've given me to do will be to bring anointing. And finally, ask, ask for anointing. You're asking for the Holy Spirit when you ask for that. Luke chapter 11, verse 13 says, oh, those who ask for the Holy Spirit, how much more the Lord will pull the Holy Spirit out upon them. Luke 11, obey, ask. Let Susie be a role model to you, she is to me. She was appointed, and she was anointed, and her influence in the Holy Spirit extends far beyond her limitations. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.