Who do you want to be like?

To the Old Testament, please, to the book of 1 Samuel. 1 Samuel, chapter 8. My burden is right in line with our brethren this morning. 1 Samuel, chapter 8. Now the children of Israel here are seeking a king.

They're seeking a king. They want to be like the nations. Because they envied the nations.

And they thought that God was not good and a king would be better. We're just going to take a few readings now. Verse 7. And the Lord said unto Samuel, hearken unto the voice of the people and all that they say unto thee.

For they have not rejected thee, but have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day I brought them up out of Egypt, even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me and served other gods, so do they also unto thee. Now therefore, hearken unto their voice, albeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and show them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.

In other words, he's going to tell them just exactly what the king is going to do. Alright, verse 10. And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people and asked of him a king.

And he said, this will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you. Now compare these things to what they had when God was there, when God was there reigning over them. He will take, make a note of everything that the king takes.

He will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots and to be his horsemen. And some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over thousands and captains over fifty, and will set them to ear his ground and to reap his harvest and to make his instruments of war and instruments of his chariots.

And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries and to be cooks and to be bakers. And he will take your fields and your vineyards, your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants.

And he will take your menservants and your maidservants and your goodliest young men and your asses and put them to his work. And he will take the tenth of your sheep and he shall be his servants. And he shall cry out in that day, Because you are king, which ye shall have chosen you, and the Lord will not hear you in that day.

Nevertheless, the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel, and they said, Nay, but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles. And Samuel heard all the words of the people and rehearsed them in the ears of the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, hearken unto their voice, make them a king.

And Samuel said unto the men of Israel, Go ye, every man, unto his city. New Testament, please, for a verse. 1 John 3 Verse 1 Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.

Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. And the Lord will bless to us the reading of his word. We just close this morning by asking a question.

Who do you want to be like? Who do we as God's people want to be like? We read of the nation, and they wanted to be like the other nations. That was their heart's desire. They were bent.

They were fixated on this thing called a king. And they were willing to give up the presence of God. They were willing to give up the protection of God.

They were willing to give up the power of God. That they might put their trust in a man that would rule over them. Someone that they could see.

Someone that they could hear his voice audibly. This is what they wanted. They wanted to be just like everyone else.

Who do you want to be like this morning? Let's face it, every one of us this morning. In the fear of God, as we search our own hearts, in our own souls, who do we want to be like? I'd like to look at this as God's people in God's assembly. That's been the theme of the morning, if you haven't noticed.

They wanted to be like the nations. They wanted to be like everyone else. And it's been my burden for probably a couple months.

I hear a lot about culture in the assembly. I hear a lot about change in culture. And so things need to change.

And it's just what we've been reminded of. We use our reasoning that we're going to change things because our culture is changing. Can I remind our hearts this morning that the world by wisdom knew not God.

And neither will we. Neither will we. Who are we going to be like? Are we going to be like the nations? Are we going to be like Him? That's 1 John.

That's what I want to get. This thing of cultural change scares me. And I'm just a young man.

And our older brethren have seen it more times over and over. It's nothing new. But it's ever real.

The change of culture. The change of our thinking in our assemblies. Let me give you some things that our culture is right now.

Right now, we are independent people. Independent. We have raised our young people to be independent.

And what did we get? We've got independent people. That's the nature of the world. The nature of God's assembly, the culture of God's assembly, we'll get it by the culture of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We'll see in Him how to behave. We'll see in Him how to think. We'll see in Him how to worship God.

We'll see in Him how to be thankful. And so on. But this world, the culture of this world, now I'm not talking about so much the different places of the globe where maybe there are people down in South America and different places and those things.

But I want to focus on the attitudes today of the culture. We have an attitude of independence. And people in assembly fellowship seek to act in own independent ways.

We have an attitude of ungratefulness. Ungratefulness. This is the culture of the world.

There is the attitude of unfaithfulness. The reality of the unfaithful culture of American society, yay, the world society, is unfaithful. Divorce rate 65% plus now.

Young people switch jobs every six months. We're unfaithful as a culture. A worldly culture.

We are untruthful. We're untruthful. Everything is about covering the liability.

Covering our actions. Make sure there's no lawsuit. Make sure that there's no repercussions.

Leave behind the safe nets of organized lies, if I could put it that way. Just make sure you're covered on truthfulness. We live in an entitlement culture.

We deserve everything. And we're willing to do anything to get it. That is the culture of our world.

We live in a vain culture. Vanity. Emptiness.

Vain. We live in a disrespectful culture. There is no respect for the authority of the law.

For you school teachers, you know that there is no respect for the teacher in school. I know a brother in an assembly fellowship and his job at school is just to be an aide and he's 6'4". 260 pounds.

He can't handle a 4-year-old. A disrespectful culture. A selfish culture.

An impatient culture. Now who do you want to be like? In the testimony where you're from, there's probably 20 different assemblies that are more represented here today. If the Lord be not come and in 20 years, what do you want your assembly to be like? Because it's starting now.

They want it to be like the nations. I was thrilled in my soul as my brother and I were teaching you the uniqueness of God's assembly. There is no place like it in this whole entire world.

And there's no place more despised by the devil than the local assembly. He hates it. The world hates it.

The flesh hates it. Who do you want to be like? I want to go down this list and I want to look at what a local assembly can be like and should be like. Because we want to be like Him.

We want our Lord to be Lord. We want Him to reign. We want Him to win our battles.

We want Him to fight our wars. We want Him to guide us. We want Him to direct us.

We are entirely shut up and dependent upon Him because that's the position that we've been given. I think that the lack of understanding of our positional truth leads us to wander and leads us to stray in our thinking. These people forgot that they were gods.

We're doing people. They forgot that they come out of Egypt and now all of a sudden, as the process of time goes, not only do they long for the things of Egypt, but they want to be like the nations. And everything they saw God do meant nothing.

You ever see God do anything? Back home in our meetings, Stan had to go home and local brother were sharing. And one brother said to me one night, he did a fine job. They all did a great job.

He said, you ever preach the Gospel? This brother doesn't preach a lot. And you see a guy whose face and it never leaves you? I said, yeah. He said, that happened to me tonight.

I said, what do you mean? Well, that visitor was out. And he looked me in the eye. And he said he was just listening for his life.

And he said, that changed me. That changed me. God spoke to that brother.

He was speaking to the visitor too. Take a moment and just look back in your life at God working. What does that mean to you? Yes, we'll go back to Salvation's Day.

And we'll go back to the time when we realized our sin and God showed us what we deserve. And He showed us that Christ had died for our sin. And there was no doubt in our mind.

And we loved Him. And we wanted to serve Him. And now something has changed.

We want to be like them. Who do we want to be like today? So we've got an ungrateful culture. The assembly is a thankful place.

We're a thankful place. We are a thankful people. And the moment we stop worshipping, we are going downhill very, very fast.

We stop being thankful for what God has given us. When was the last time you thanked God for your overseers? When was the last time you thanked God for your assembly? We are a thankful people. We are a committed people.

Now as we go down this list, you're going to think of people that come to your mind when the word independent is mentioned and the word ungrateful. But I don't want you to think about them. I want you to see like I've seen in me the percentage of visits in me.

The unfaithfulness in the culture. Are you committed to your assembly? You'll be as committed to your assembly as you are committed to your Lord. They're inseparable.

You cannot be genuinely committed to God's assembly and not be genuinely committed to communion with God and worshipping God. It's hypocrisy to pretend that we're committed to the assembly and we're never committed to the Lord in our private life. Are you committed? Are we committed to our families? You notice what the king took.

He took the sons. He took the daughters. He took the lands.

He took the vineyard. He took the olive grove, whatever it was called. He took everything good and gave them nothing in return.

Are you committed to God's assembly? Let me put it in a different way. Are you at every meeting if at all possible? That's commitment. Committed.

To gather in the Lord's presence. To meet with the Lord. If you're coming for the brethren, you've missed it.

If you're coming so the elders don't come and give you a visit, you've missed it. What you're missing is this. The presence of the Lord and the glory of God in His own assembly.

To hear God's voice and to draw near to the living and the true God. This isn't playing church in God's assembly. This is the presence of God.

Who do you want to be like? An entitlement culture. I deserve it. What do you deserve your brother to date? Dear sister, what do you deserve? It's not a gospel meeting, but we can use the chart, can't we? This is what we deserve.

And we have been delivered by God's matchless grace. Someone says, oh, but I don't feel loved in God's assembly. God didn't put you into the assembly to be loved.

He put you to love. He didn't bring you into His assembly so that you could be served. He brought you in to serve.

He didn't bring you into God's assembly. He didn't save you that you would be pampered in this life. He sent you to be a sacrifice.

Can you see the difference between Him and them? Who do you want to be like? The vain versus the real. I think of our Lord Jesus Christ in all of the reality. Nothing vain about Him.

Totally genuine. Totally thorough. Totally engaged.

Engaged with the situation around Him. Engaged with heaven. Nothing vain about Him.

Nothing vain. Who do you want to be like? Disrespectful. No reverence.

That's our world. Is that our assembly? You see, what we are in our private life in the presence of God, and what we are in our assembly life in the presence of God needs to be the same. And as face answers to face, we know we're not the same.

Who do we want to be like? You see, we read in John that we're going to be like Him. I've got a little boy, and if you've got kids, it's amazing, it's scary the whole nine yards that they want to be like you. When was the last time your brother or your sister, alone in the presence of God, you told God, I want to be like Him? I want to be like Jesus.

I don't want to be like LeBron James. I don't want to be like Bill Gates. I want to be like Him.

Did you know that you can be like Him? You can be like Him. Yes, we can. How? We learn about Him.

We conform to His image. And that is God's will. He is seeking to conform us to the image of His Son.

Do you want to be like Him? You see, that's a hard question to answer sometimes. Because that's a pricey question. What price are you willing to pay to be like Him? Because the other way is going to cost you too.

God's assembly, the person of Christ, the presence of God, there's nothing like it. Nothing can be compared to the scriptural gathering of God's people. In all of its simplicity, in all of its truthfulness, in all of its realness, now vanity, in all of its thankfulness, in all of its fellowship, in all of its committedness, God helped us this morning to value what we've been given.

We've been given so great salvation. We've been given the Lord Jesus Christ. Who do we want to be like today? Today.

Not tomorrow. Today. They said give us a King.

And after all God had done for them, through miracle after miracle, it amazed them, it thrilled them, and yet they wanted to be like the nations. God help us to appreciate what we have today and that we might live in the good of it and bring Him honor and glory and become more like Him.