Faithful Beyond What You Can See: David Part 21 | Pastor Allen Nolan Sermon

And if you're new here, or maybe you haven't been here for a while, let me explain what we're doing.

We're currently in a series studying the life of David, and we've come to a period in David's life that's known as the fugitive years.

In other words, the years that David spent on the run and trying to keep from being captured or killed by Saul.

Now, the events that occurred during his years as a fugitive are recorded in the book of 1 Samuel from chapters 20 to 31, and they're recorded in chronological order.

So what I did was I placed all of these events that occurred during these years as a fugitive I placed them on a slide and I projected them on the back wall where everyone can see them.

As I've said over and over again, we don't have time to cover each one of these events in depth.

So what I'm doing is I'm skimming over them, or at least trying to skim over them, and I'm stopping from time to time to point out what I consider to be important information or to make application, because there's so many things that happened in the life of David that we all can apply to our life.

There are lessons we can learn from those events.

Now, we've already covered the first 11 events on the list, so this morning we're going to cover the next event, the death of Samuel.

So turn with me, if you would, to the book of 1 Samuel, chapter 25, and let's read verse 1.

"'Then Samuel died.'" And all Israel gathered together and mourned for him and buried him at his house in Ramah.

And David arose and went down to the wilderness of Paran.

Now, in Cherokee County, we say Paran, but I'll pronounce it the way it should be, Paran.

Now, this is a very brief account of Samuel's death, considering the fact that he was such a major character in the Old Testament, and especially in the story of David.

You see, Samuel's death marked the end of an era.

He was the last great judge in the period of the judges.

In fact, there's one whole book that is named Judges, and all it does is it covers the judges.

Samuel was the last of the judges.

He was also a prophet, and he was the person who led Israel in the transition from being led by a judge to being ruled by a king.

So his death marked the passing of a man who stood at the intersection of three major institutions— Judge, prophet, and kingmaker.