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This is Glendale Presbyterian Church People Moving Power. This tape includes the reading of Scripture and a sermon by Dr. Bruce Douglas-Steelman entitled, "Are You Part of Your Problem, or of Its Answer?" This is the fourth in the series on Saul, the first king of Israel. As soon as the voice stops on this side of the tape, be sure to turn immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message.

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This tape is copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Any public or commercial use in full or in part requires the advanced written permission of Dr. Steelman. The private use of this material for the spiritual gain of yourself or others is heartily encouraged. If you would like a catalog listing other tapes available, write to People Moving Power at the address on this cassette.

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Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's word as it is recorded in the first book of Samuel, the 28th chapter, beginning at the verse which is numbered three. Let us stand for the reading of the word of God. "Now Samuel had died, and all Israel had mourned for him, and buried him in Ramah his own city.

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And Saul had put the mediums and the wizards out of the land. The Philistines assembled, and came and encamped at Shunem. And Saul gathered all Israel, and they encamped at Gilboa. When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly.

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And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dream, or by urine, or by prophet. Then Saul said to his servants, 'Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her.' And his servants said to him, 'Behold, there is a witch at Endor.' So Saul disguised himself, and put on other garments, and went, he and two men with him.

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And they came to the woman by night. And he said, 'Divine for me by a spirit, and bring up for me whomever I shall name to you.' The woman said to him, 'Surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the wizards from the land. Why then are you laying a snare for my life to bring about my death?'

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But Saul swore to her by the Lord, 'As the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.' Then the woman said, 'Whom shall I bring up for you?' He said, 'Bring up Samuel for me.' When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice.

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And the woman said to Saul, 'Why have you deceived me? You are Saul.' The king said to her, 'Have no fear. What do you see?' And the woman said to Saul, 'I see a god coming up out of the earth.' And he said to her, 'What is his appearance?'

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And she said, 'An old man is coming up, and he is wrapped in a rose.' And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground, and did obeisance." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Amen. You may be seated.

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Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. He weighs 345 pounds, is extremely muscular, and stands 7 feet tall. That is, when he stands.

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Generally, he walks on his hands and his feet at the same time. His name is Memba, and he is the largest gorilla in the San Diego wild animal park near Escondido. The week after Easter, I had the opportunity to observe him. He is a tremendously powerful animal, and a very interesting one.

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He is 12 years old now, but has the mentality of a 2-year-old child. Gorillas, interestingly enough, in spite of all their formidable strength and terrible and awesome appearance, do not eat meat. They eat only greens. They are herbivorous. And I stood while Memba's keepers threw into his enclosure several bushels of greens and shoots.

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One of these greens fell on the top of a log which is permanently placed there for Memba to get exercise. And this great gorilla stretched as high as he could, and reached up between the crook of a branch to grasp the shoot that had fallen upon this log. When he got hold of the shoot, he closed his hand on it, which of course made his hand, which is as big as a ham anyway, even larger. So large that he could not get his fist back out through the lie in the branch.

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I'd heard about this before, but I'd never seen it with my own eyes. There he was, caught. He didn't want to let go of the shoot. And he did want to get his hand back. He contemplated the problem for a considerable time.

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At one point he actually let go of the shoot, brought his hand out, looked at it, then put it right back in the same place again, and grabbed the shoot, and was in the same problem. In anger and frustration at one point, he beat on his chest with his other hand. You could hear the rumble across the whole valley.

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Finally, in despair and frustration, he let the shoot go, went over into the corner, put his face toward the wall, and sat there and sulked about it. Now, to say the very least, Memba was a part of his problem, and not of its answer. John Keats wrote that there is a giant agony in the world. Well, Memba's agony at that particular moment was totally and utterly his own fault.

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He was reigning all over his own parade. And that happens not only to gorillas, but also to people. Consider as Exhibit A, from our own particular human species, King Saul. He was a man of whom one wise man said, "He always managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

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We have, in the last three weeks, been reviewing some of the experiences in his days. We have found him to be a person richly endowed by God, with all of the capacities necessary to be a great king. But a man who misused, or who abused those capacities, to the place where he reduced himself to the ranks of the miserable. He refused to be loyal to the royal in him, to use the gifts God had given him.

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He became a crowd-following, chasing after the caprice of the multitude. He moved into a time of great arrogance, in which he accepted not even the guidance of God, but saw himself as supreme in wisdom. And then, being singularly unsuccessful in his kingship because of all these attitudes, he became envious of those who were being successful in the living of their lives.

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A man, you see, caught by indolence, by conceit, and by envy. In every one of those instances, he was part of his own problem, and not of its answer. Today, we discover him in yet another sad scene. Trying to gain counsel, trying to gain strength, trying to gain that which he had so indiscriminately thrown away,

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he goes to see a witch. Now, to me, one of the most amazing proofs of the inspiration of Scripture is the fact that pages written three and four thousand years ago can have amazing and astonishing relevance to the very day in which we are living.

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It is almost as if everything that happens today is but an echo of what happened a long time ago. The heart of man, you see, is no different now than it was then. And the same God who fashioned our hearts inspired and in-breathed this word. So though written long ago, it speaks with relevance and power now.

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Take, for example, Saul going to this witch. In the early verses of the 28th chapter of 1 Samuel, just read in your hearing, it is recorded that Saul, in obedience to the word of God, had ordered all witches, all mediums, all soothsayers, all wizards, to lead his land.

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The clear teaching of Scripture is that such persons are contrary to the will of God. So Saul said, "Lead this land. Witches, be gone." And four verses later, he turns to some of his courtiers and says, "Find me a witch." He recognizes, you see, the problem of the occult.

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He solved it by driving it out of the place, but just days later, he becomes part of the problem. "Find me a witch." Have you ever heard the individual who says, "The carnage on our highways is terrible. The way people drive is absolutely murderous. It ought to be stopped."

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But that same individual, when he or she happens to be in a hurry, when they have to get somewhere in a time that makes it inconvenient to observe the rules of the highway, quite easily excuse themselves and become part of the problem, not of its answer. Here is the individual who criticizes the Church.

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Why isn't the Church doing this or that? Why is the Church not active here or there? Why is there inadequate leadership for this program or insufficient initiative in this particular idea? Yet that same individual, when contacted to become involved in some work or ministry of the Church, finds 101 different reasons why he or she should be excluded from the list of those so enrolled.

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And by excluding themselves, they become part of the problem and not of its answer. This is exactly what Saul did. He sought to exclude himself from a law which he applied to everyone else. This is true in all of us.

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We have an almost endless capacity to deceive ourselves about ourselves. And we do it not only in the social sector. We do it inwardly as well. Psychologists call it the process of rationalization. It's the erection of a psychological smoke screen designed to enable us to do things we won't let other people do.

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To approve things in our own conduct that we condemn quite readily in other individuals. To justify endlessly in ourselves that which we would judge, and judge censoriously and critically in another. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. I don't know whether that's true or not, but I do know that the unexamined life is a lot harder to live.

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And the individual who consistently makes himself a part of his problems and not of his answers is living the unexamined life. Take for example a woman whom we shall call this morning Louise. Louise was having heart palpitations and thought that it wouldn't be long before she had a massive, possibly fatal heart attack. She went to a great number of doctors and the doctors told her she had no physical or organic difficulties whatever.

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She was still unconvinced, the palpitations were undeniably real, she felt her heart pounding. And she thought she couldn't live with this very long without some kind of major coronary accident. So she went to the preacher for prayer, beseeching God to be relieved of these burdens. When the minister heard that she had been told by the doctors that she had no physical disabilities,

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he asked her when the difficulty started. It so happened that it started rather shortly after the death of her mother. But she could see no connection at all between the death of her mother and what was going on in her own experience. She agreed to enter into a period of counseling. And it became evident after a few weeks that she had in fact prayed that her mother would die.

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Her mother was considerably older, was in suffering ill health, times were becoming more difficult for the family. She had prayed that her elderly mother would be taken. And then she felt guilty about that. She thought there was something very indecent and unclean about praying that her mother would die.

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She felt this so much to be the case that she never could admit to anyone that she had so prayed. She found it difficult even to admit to herself that she had done this. And of course, feeling that way about things, she could not gain any forgiveness from God about the thing. You can't be forgiven for something which you won't even admit to yourself that you have done.

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Not only this, but her mother had taught her years before when she was a very little girl, that if you died with any sins unforgiven, you would go to a fiery hell to be tormented forever and forever. Now conscious of having prayed for her mother's death and feeling very guilty about it, she began to worry about the possibility of her own death.

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And worrying about her death with only the promise of this endless torment before her, having had that drummed into her as a little girl, she went into deep fear and anxiety. It became very clear, you see, that the palpitations were not because of any disease or organic malfunction, but because this woman was full of guilt, tension, anxiety, and downright fright.

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The minister counseled her concerning those things, and they prayed not about the palpitations, not about the heart attack she thought she was going to have, but about these matters. And they were relieved by the grace of God. And with the release came a vital and productive Christian life,

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and of course the disappearance altogether of the palpitations and the fears which were associated with them. Now you see what happened. Here was a woman who was part of her problem, and because she would not confront that problem, would not face the reality of it,

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she could not gain the power of God in dealing with it. She had given herself over to witchcraft, the witchcraft of weaving some kind of spell and deceiving herself about what the nature of her real hurts were. And until she brought that nature out into the open where it could be seen,

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came out of the cave into the light of the day, turned away from the end door of her spirit out to where the light of God's truth could shine on the scene, then, and only then, could she bring her power and God's power to focus on the difficulty which was hers. And with that focus came the cure.

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It's a truism, you see, but needs to be often repeated. God does help those who help themselves. The individual who keeps drinking from the cauldron of their own rationalizations will not find much help from God.

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He cannot speak to them for they will not hear. The individual who insists upon riding about always on the broomstick of their own delusions and their own confusions and will not confront that in themselves which really needs to be changed, will not say, "All witches be gone," and really mean it.

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That individual cannot, by definition, be helped. He will never succeed in pulverizing problems. On the other hand, the individual who opens himself has all the power of God available to him. We have to hold on to the principle, you see, that we can become strongest at our weakest point.

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The Scripture teaches us that God's strength is made perfect in weakness and we've got to be willing to apply that to ourselves as we confront the needs in our own lives. One of the young men in our church in a football game about two years ago broke his leg very seriously. A few weeks ago I was watching that same young man play basketball

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and I noticed that the leg which had been broken was thicker at one point than it was anywhere else. I asked him if this is where the break had occurred. It was so. He explained to me that the bone had healed so successfully that the bone was actually thicker there than it was at any other place in his leg.

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Where the break had occurred, there was now the greatest strength. Now that principle is applicable to every dimension of our lives. Where we are weakest, we can become strongest if we will focus in openness upon that sore wherever it happens to be.

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And then having so focused on it, we must begin to work with it. There's a little girl born here in the United States some years ago. She was both black and poor, and in our society those are two great handicaps. She was not only black and poor, but she also was very sickly,

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having one illness and difficulty after another. They lived on a farm. One day in a period of recuperation from one of her many illnesses, her wise mother gave her an assignment.

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She said, "You see that big rock down there by the creek? I want you to get that rock and I want you to bring it up and set it by the kitchen door so that we can step onto that rock before we step through the kitchen door." "Oh, Mother," she said, "I'm too weak to lift that rock."

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And her mother said, "That's right, I know you are, but you can move that rock even if it's only a half an inch at a time. And I want you to begin moving that rock today, and I want you to work at it every day until you get that rock

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from that creek to the kitchen door." And the little girl did. Sometimes she didn't even move it a half an inch, but she wrestled with it every day. It took her a month and 18 days to get that rock from the creek to the kitchen door.

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A healthy girl could have carried it from one place to the other in less than 20 minutes. That's how long it took her. But in wrestling with that rock and in the exercise of struggling with the problem, she began to regain her strength.

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A few months later, the family moved to Harlem. And in Harlem, she became very active in street athletics and games and became the table tennis champion of Harlem. Later, she moved to tennis courts.

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And it was just a few years ago that thousands of people stood and applauded as that poor, sickly, black girl, now the superb athlete, Althea Gibson, walked to the Royal Box at Wimbledon in England and received from Queen Elizabeth II the crown as the world's finest woman tennis player.

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It happened, you see, because she started to wrestle with the problem. Confronting it and wrestling with it, she was open to using her power and, what's more important, the power of God flowing into the place she had opened. It's very important to recognize that I am not suggesting this morning

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that we can drive away the witches only with our own might, but rather that by opening ourselves and confronting the realities in our lives, we can enable God to flood into us and bring his power to bear on the place where we most need that power.

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It's like a big ship. Have you ever wondered why those big ships don't tip over in storms? I know they do in the movie, but they don't anywhere else. I've been on those ships in storms where they're listing so much to one side,

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you find yourself pressing down with your feet against the deck over here as if you're going to somehow pull it back. They never tip over. And the reason is this. Below the bottom deck are vast caverns of steel

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which contain thousands of gallons of fuel and of water. Now, when that ship tilts, this liquid rolls to one side, but then it rolls back again. And as it rolls back again in the curved base of that ship, the ship is pulled back up to the upright position once more.

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Now, God is like that in our lives. As we fill ourselves with his grace, as we receive within ourselves his word, as we store it up in our hearts that we might not sin against him, as we know the strengthening fellowship of communion with other Christians,

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as we involve ourselves in ministry and are more ministered to by our service than others are ministered to by our service, as we do these things, you see, God floods in. As we go through the storm, he always pulls us to that upright position.

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[silence] [silence] [silence] There was a noted baritone by the name of Roland Hayes.

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He was invited to sing in Berlin, Germany. This was during the height of the Nazi regime. The newspapers were immediately critical of his coming to sing there. The Nazis were very much anti-black.

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The paper said things like, "It is blasphemous to have Cotton Patch songs sung in Beethoven Hall." Roland Hayes, the black man, went to sing anyway. When he stepped out on the stage that night, he was immediately greeted by a chorus of boos and hisses.

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He crossed the stage to the piano where his accompanist was already seated. The boos and hisses did not decrease. Now, it was his custom before singing to always bow his head in prayer, to ask God to use him as his instrument in the performance that was to come.

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And usually, during that time of prayer, others, even if they were applauding whatever they were doing, would become quiet. You know how it is when one person prays, you have a tendency to become quiet yourself, out of respect for their serious conversation with God.

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So he bowed his head in prayer, thinking that this might quiet the crowd. It did not. The boos and the hisses continued for two minutes, three, four, five, seven, nine, ten. And it was just after ten minutes had gone by

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that this man standing there facing this booing and hissing crowd, that there was, for a moment, a lull in the uproar. And in that moment, without taking his eyes from the audience, Roland Hayes said to his accompanist, "Play the Schubert."

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And the accompanist began to play Schubert's "Thou Art My Peace." And a moment later, the clear, strong tones of Hayes' voice lifted that song out over that audience. And he carried the evening to a triumphant conclusion.

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Now I submit to you that the ingredients in that success were, one, his refusal to run away from the problem. He went to Berlin. He stood in front of the audience. He confronted it as it really was.

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Then also, he began to work with the problem. He used the talents that he had. He sang the song which he felt would be the appropriate song, out of his wisdom, out of his skill.

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He used everything that was his to deal with the situation. But he also prayed. And the power of God came into him, as he himself testified later. And he felt that night a victor from the beginning.

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He was practicing the principles demonstrated to us by our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, was born a Jew in a world that was jealous of the Jews. That was a problem.

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He was born behind the Roman curtain, the iron curtain of his day. And that was a problem. He was born a Nazarene, not even a high-class Jew, a low-class Jew. And that was a problem.

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His father was a laborer, and therefore could give him no assets as far as financial things were concerned. He himself said, "Foxes have their holes, birds have their nests. I have no place to put my head."

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That was a problem. He never visited any of the major cities of his day. He was never in Athens or in Rome or in Alexandria. And that was a problem.

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He didn't have any friends who were in positions of power. He didn't know any VIPs. He knew a fisherman who wanted to see if a coward could be turned into a hero. He knew a woman who'd been sick for a long time and wanted to be healed.

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He knew a prostitute who wanted to try to be a lady. He knew a crock of crooked politician who wanted to go straight. He knew people like that, and he loved people like that. Never once in all of his recorded ministry does he ever address a single individual as a sinner.

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He accepted people like that. He said, "Together, you and me, we can do anything." And he took the weight of all those people upon him. And that was a problem.

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And they killed him. Surely that was a problem. He left no estate. And to some people, that would be a considerable problem.

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Of course, it was true that in his dying, as in everything else in his life, what he touched he transformed. He took the cross, a hideous instrument of torment, and made it into a placard, which proved to all of history that there's no sin that's too big for God to forgive. If God could forgive those who murdered his own son, he could forgive anything.

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And they buried him in a tomb, and that's a problem. And then his enemies went away and said, "That's that." And his disciples ran off to the hills, cowards every one. And that, too, was a problem.

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And then came Easter. I don't have to argue about Easter. For 2,000 years after the event, we're gathered here on a Sunday morning. And millions like us are gathered all about this globe.

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That is the evidence of the reality of Easter. And those disciples, now no longer part of the world's problem, but ready to become a part of the world's answer, turned and marched out into the world. And as they began to march, another problem presented itself.

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How could this Jesus, present with them now in the resurrected form, be with all of his disciples? Well, he solved that problem, too. He went off to the kingdom of heaven in the flesh, but he sent his Holy Spirit to be with every one of us.

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We could not all get next to his physical person, just as not all people can get close to any one individual. Imagine what it would be like trying to get an appointment with Jesus. But he came in the Spirit.

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And so he came in a ubiquitous manner so that he can be with everyone. Suddenly, he had millions of tongues. Suddenly, he had millions of hands. Suddenly, he had millions of feet.

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And his minions have moved out across the world as part of the world's answer. When an individual lets that Spirit of Jesus Christ flood into his life, amazing things happen. He thinks thoughts and then wonders, "How did I think of that?" He utters words and then asks himself, "Did I say that?"

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He does deeds and ponders, "Where on earth did I get the courage to do that?" He begins, you see. And as he begins, things begin to change. He turns away from being part of his own problem.

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He turns away from rationalization to confront the truth. And the truth that is Jesus Christ floods in. And with that truth comes a knowledge of the way. And with that way comes not building a living, but building a life.

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And it's beautiful to see. It's magnificent to behold. And it's a joy to experience. So I want to ask you this morning,

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is it really comfortable living in a cave, on your knees before a witch, beside a defeated king like Saul? Wouldn't it be better to come out into the light,

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to be open with yourself, about yourself, to claim the power of God that's available to you, and to become strongest, even at your weakest point? Today, wouldn't you really like to become not part of the problem,

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but part of your answer? Let us pray. If you have answered that question in the affirmative, then I ask you now to seal it.

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We have spoken of openness. We have spoken of the revelation of the truth. We have spoken of the courage of confronting oneself, of recognizing one's need,

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and of beginning to work with the problem so the power of God can come flooding in. You have the opportunity to begin that work today, and to experience that power in this hour. I ask you now to commit yourself

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to coming forward when this service is at an end, and to meeting here with those who are ready to share with you the answers. Do not let the moment slip by. Claim it.

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Say, "All which is in me be gone." And when this service is done, come up here and let us help you in the chasing and destroying of them. Oh God, let there be light.

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Let there be light. And with light, victory. For Jesus' sake. Amen.