[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast, Madison Church of Christ Sermons thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: We'll just start with a few of the same things from last time and then keep moving on. So this class is over the Life of David. Ironically, last week and this week we're not talking about the life of David, but we're kind of setting up like him coming into the picture.
So just get ready for that Life of I'm so excited.
Like in class last week I was already like thinking of two or three other classes that we're going to have this quarter about different aspects of the life of David, and it's just hard not to be passionate about this story. There's so many different things that are just fascinating, relatable, crazy. Just there's a lot to this man's story in service to God. So we're going to learn a lot about it in this class.
I'm not going to put up this every week, but in case I'm sure that some of the folks who were in this class last week decided to attend Will's class this week after week one. And if you happen to not be here last week and are now in my class, this is me. Just wanted to say a quick few things about myself and then I won't ever bring up again in this class.
I'm Richard. I've been the youth minister at Mass inn for about eight years now, working with the seventh through 12th graders.
I have a wife and two little ones right now and it is a party at home at all times.
I've done different types of studies and stuff like that. I've been blessed to be able to go on two different kind of like archaeological studies in Egypt and in Israel and those have like kind of enlightened me in looking at the text in a few different ways and it's really caused me to key in on context when I'm reading Scripture. So any Bible class that you're in of mine, since I've been on these trips especially, you're going to have a lot of context and sometimes it's boring and sometimes it's not. But I really, truly do believe it helps us to understand the text a little bit more deeply.
Last week, we talked about just an overview and background. We discussed how the books of first and Second Samuel really were just one book called Samuel, Samuel, Shema and El, like God has heard or God hears.
That's where his name comes from. But we talked about him in the very first section of Samuel. But then the second section of the original book of Samuel deals all with Saul.
And especially as I was spending some deep time on Saul over the last little while, I began to realize, like, David is an incredibly relatable character, but sadly, Saul is as well.
In this class, you guys can kind of see in other classes, we'll talk about a few chapters at a time on David, though.
But in these first two, just to get through Samuel and Saul, we're going through a bunch of chapters and big blocks. In this class, I might talk a little bit quickly. We'll have some room for discussion, but especially once we get to these David chapters. I'm going to be expecting you guys to talk a lot more, but for right now, I'm speed talking, so we're going to get into this.
Our goals for the quarter, just understanding the lenses that we can view Scripture through.
I don't care what background you come from, you probably view certain things scripturally in a very particular way because of your upbringing, because of what you've been through in your recent past. That doesn't necessarily mean theologically.
It could mean things like in the David story, there are crazy relatable moments, good and bad. There are times where David is praising God with all of his might. There are times where he loses a child. There are times where David is just lost for words and doesn't know what to do in the midst of all those things. Each and every one of us in this room is probably going to go back to a moment where we're trying to take that in in this particular way. And understanding those lenses is very important.
This is a Bible class where I hope, I truly, truly hope that you guys don't just spend the 30 to 45 minutes of class in here thinking about it and then go on throughout your week without doing more of a deep dive.
This is an incredibly impactful story, and ultimately I'm only going to be able to teach about 10 classes of it. And they're not meant for you guys to just learn everything about David in. I'm going to challenge you guys hopefully in every single class to go back and to take the scriptures that we've read and dig into them a little bit more, apply them in your own life, how you see fit and study a little bit more about it. Now we're going to look at David's big picture, how David fits in the big story of God. We're going to look at asking these three questions anytime that we come upon a text and then hopefully whether you're a brand new Christian and are just now looking at the Bible or whether you've been a Christian for many, many years, you're going to be able to develop some new to me questions and research from this class. So last week we had a challenge. We're going to start with at least a little bit of discussion and I just want to ask you guys this one at very beginning, how many people can you guys come up with that God has used for his glory prior to David, who are thought of as lesser in their society? So this could include people who were not the firstborn of their family, people who were weak or disabled, people who were infertile or struggled giving birth, et cetera, et cetera. All of these people in that society were thought of and a negative connotation, yet we see them used a lot.
Can you guys throw out any names that you think of off the bat that were pre David? Ruth. Okay, very, very good. So she was never really expected to do what she did in the end at all. Who else?
Ehud. Hey, that's pretty good. Yeah, he's a left handed guy.
[00:06:53] Speaker C: They were kind of followed up as weak. But he killed a guy.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Yeah, not only that, but when.
So when you look into the Hebrew of Ehud, if you guys didn't know this, he's never called left handed in the Hebrew. He's called bound in his right hand. That's what the text says. Which doesn't mean that he was naturally left handed. That actually means that he was disabled in his right hand. So he was naturally left handed. Very, very good. All right, who else can you guys think of a couple of slave women or tribes of Israel? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth, yeah. And he's to come. That's going to be a fascinating portion of 2 Samuel later on. But here just some ones that I thought of. I wasn't trying to throw up anybody. That's funny. That you said Ehud, Andrew, but Ehud and Moses. When it comes to being disabled, Moses likely had a speech impediment. The way that everything's phrased in terms of struggling giving birth or struggling with infertility for a while, we have Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Hannah.
In terms of not the firstborn, just think of this for a second.
In the early, like earliest days of mankind, what was like sought after? Was the firstborn, like taking over the family name? Being the person who like, is honoring God in whatever ways, Being the person who takes the riches and the jobs and everything else.
The people that God uses that are not the firstborn. Abel, Seth, So like some of the first people who ever existed, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, none of them were the firstborn. Joseph was not a firstborn. Moses was not a firstborn. Gideon, Samuel. And then we come up on Saul and David in this text. So here's my question for you guys. By God, using these people specifically with these attributes that would have caused them to be thought of as lesser in their society, what does that tell us about God?
What does that teach us?
And not only can he use anybody, but he specifically, I think, wanted to choose people who were so far down the totem pole that we're able to read this text today and be like, well, what can he not do with anybody? He can do this with me. He can do this with the lowest of the low in our society, the person that I might look past in any way.
I think it teaches us a lot about love.
I think it teaches us a lot about God's desire to just stand by us and be loyal and connect to us.
Things like this are very significant and I don't want us to pass over them when it comes to the Old Testament text. Because nearly any story that you read is meant to teach you. Not just the story, but something very specific about God.
Alright, so I'm going to start talking maybe at 1.2 times speed to get through everything tonight. But we are in section two of the book of Samuel. This is in first Samuel, chapter eight through 14. And we'll get a little bit into verse or chapter 15 as well.
We worked through this last week. Almost any Old Testament story that you work through, the people's names are very, very significant. They almost always prophesy or mean something.
So Samuel, this is all going to be associated with 1st Samuel, 8, 14, 8 15. Samuel means God has heard Saul. The name Saul literally means asked for.
Agag means warlike or violent. Interestingly, later on in the Old Testament, we have Haman, who was called an Agagite.
Jonathan means gift of God, and Ramah means high place.
So whether it's in this study tonight or whether it's in your own studies after this class, try to make note of each of those names and what they mean in the text, and I promise you, you'll get something a little bit more out of it.
So learning about Saul, we know that he's the first king of Israel.
Moses, 300 years prior to this, actually wrote about how to choose a king in Deuteronomy, chapter 17.
And here's what God says through Moses. You'll enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You will take that land and live in it. And then you will say, we will put a king over us, like the nations around us.
When that happens, you must be sure to choose the king that the Lord your God chooses. The king must be one of your own people, and you must not make him a foreigner. The king must not get more and more horses for himself. He must not send people to Egypt to get more horses because the Lord has told you you must never go back that way. Also, the king must not have too many wives because that will make him turn away from the Lord. And he must not make himself rich with silver and gold. So as you're reading this, if you're like me, you're thinking like, well, this doesn't only apply to Saul. This applies to David. This applies to Solomon. This applies to Jeroboam, Rehoboam, like, they're all messing up this thing.
When the king begins to rule, he must write a copy of the law for himself in a book. He must make that copy from the books that the priests from the tribe of Levi keep. He must keep the book with him and read it all of his life, because he must learn to respect the Lord his God. And he must learn to completely obey everything the law commands. Then the king will not think he is better than any of his own people.
He will not turn away from the law, but he will follow it. Exactly.
Then he and his descendants will rule the kingdom of Israel for a long time.
Fast forward 300 years, maybe 320 years at this point.
And then we get to the beginning of Saul's story.
So we're in First Samuel, chapter eight.
And here's what it reads, starting in verse one. When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as Israel's leaders. The name of his firstborn was Joel. The name of his second, Abijah. And they served at Beersheba. But his sons did not follow his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice. So all the elders of Israel gathered together and called to Samuel at Ramah.
They said to him, you are old and your sons don't follow your ways. Now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.
But when they said, give us a king to lead us, this displeased Samuel. So he prayed to the Lord and the Lord told him, listen to all that the people are saying to you, and is it not you they have rejected? But they have rejected, is it not you they have rejected? But they have rejected me as their king.
Following this section, Samuel lets the people know, alright, you can choose a king, but here's what it's going to cost you. And he begins talking about how their sons will go to war, how their daughters will be taken out of their households to work for the kingdom in the end, how the beasts and vineyards will be given to the king, how he'll take their things, how things will ultimately just not be better for the people when that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.
But the people refused to listen to Samuel. No, they said, we want a king over us, then we'll be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.
When Samuel heard all the people had said, he repeated it to the Lord. And the Lord answered, listen to them and give them a king.
So a couple different questions I have about this section.
Why do you think the Israelites were so focused on having a king?
So that they could look like other nations.
Any ideas behind that? Because that text echoes it twice here. And it's echoed another, I think four times in the next five chapters. They wanted to look like other nations. That's why they wanted a king.
Any ideas?
Grass is greener on the other side. Yeah.
What everybody else had was more desirable than what they had politically. They didn't have any standing without a king.
[00:15:32] Speaker C: They didn't have a seat at the table.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: They did not have enough faith in God to trust in God. It's, it's fascinating to discuss. We talked about a little bit last week what the map of Israel would have looked like at this time. And over that 300 year period prior to Samuel coming on the scene. You have the 12 tribes. They're scattered throughout the land. But do you remember how we described wasn't just a set land, it was them battling for land against the Ammonites, against the Philistines, against others. It's almost like this blob that's moving and adjusting in all these areas. The tribes themselves would have been in conflict sometimes with one another, not necessarily simply at war, even though Benjamin almost got destroyed. But other times they would have just said, we're not going to fight with you. It was this disjointed, just nasty blob of tribes in this area. So from that perspective, I can see how they would want to be ruled by one governing body so that they do have a standing.
But at the same time, how did God originally set up the 12 tribes to live, to act, to be?
He set them up to ultimately follow him and his will. Now the tribes are saying they want a king here, but it's almost as if they've been dealing with this struggle for so long, they've given up on being righteously led and have said we want to be like all the other nations and be led in a way that's similar to them. That does not result in God's righteousness, but results ultimately in what we think might be our glory. So here's my next question.
God talks about and knows about the pain that the Hebrew people will suffer if they get a king. It's mentioned multiple times and we'll see it even more in this text. How God knows what's going to occur from this. So why does God allow his people to walk into this and to like really harm themselves?
I wrote this question on, I guess Monday.
And on Monday it was a really, really cold day and I had been sitting at my desk for a while inside and I got home and I decided like, we gotta take a walk or something. But it was like 30 or 40 degrees out.
So I get home, I say, hey, let's go on a walk. So Sarah and I are both putting on clothes and our little three year old daughter is excited to go outside.
But she goes, I don't want to wear a jacket. And I'm like, you probably want to wear a jacket. And she says, no, I don't want to wear a jacket. And I said, here's a toboggan. No, I don't want to wear that. I like the cold, Daddy.
She actually ended up not wearing.
She wore these little princess shoes that are meant for only in the house and stuff. No socks or anything under them, had not cold gear on. And we started to take a walk. I ultimately just said, all right, here we go.
We took a walk that lasted Maybe like eight or nine minutes in the end. And it was because of what she said. I'm freezing. I'm so cold. This is miserable, this is awful.
And as we're walking back, I was thinking of this question and I said, what are we going to do next time?
We'll wear a jacket, Daddy.
We'll make sure to wear a jacket.
And it's funny to talk about her from that perspective. But ultimately, once again, like all of Samuel, do we not relate to all of this as well?
I don't care if you're a 3 year old, I don't care if you're a 90 year old in here.
All of us sometimes think that we know the right answer and that we know what's best for us, but ultimately I just don't think that's the case.
Richard, One thing I was saying too.
[00:19:39] Speaker C: Is it's also helping us note our need for King Jesus, because, you know, even like we're studying him, the king after man, after God's own heart, the best one is not even that great. So even the best earthly king that we can have is still going to.
He's going to fall short of what we need, pointing us towards a better king.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Absolutely. It's the story of the entire Bible.
It's from the very beginning of Genesis. Mankind separated from God in the garden. And the goal is how do we get back under a king, into a kingdom that is righteous, that that is good?
And the whole story of the Bible is figuring that out. It's the people moving towards what can our answer be? We'll try the Judges, we'll try the Kings, we'll try sects of Jews with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, we'll try all of these different things, but ultimately the only king that we're ever meant to have is God.
So we get to 1st Samuel 9. I would love to read this story with you guys, but I created my little paraphrase and it's going to sound weird, and that's because 1st Samuel 9 we're introduced to Saul and it is weird.
Essentially. I did not use any AI for this. So this is just my words. So I'm sorry if they're bad.
A man searching for his father's donkeys meets the Seer, or the Great Seer who worships on a high place. The Seer has spoken with God and he's been expecting this man who is out looking for his donkeys.
The Seer finds him and anoints him as king over a vast area of tribes who are all in conflict with one another. In order to provide proof that this anointing was valid, the seer tells the man that he will meet a group of men on his way back down from the high place, who has three three goats, bread, and wine, that they will give him two pieces of bread, and after talking with them, he will begin to prophesy with a group of worshipers going down from the high place. And this will cause him to know that he's king.
This is the weird, strange, odd way that we're introduced to King Saul.
I want so little portions of this class. I'm not even going to talk about it. I'm just going to send you guys on your own deep dives. If you've never studied contextualization, I challenge you to do it multiple times throughout scripture.
God decides to work in not necessarily the normal, common way that a lot of people anticipate him working, but instead he asks his people to worship him within a context that's slightly different. None of it is against his law, but it is different.
A seer on a high place is exactly what the rest of the Old Testament refers to the pagans doing.
It's almost always thought of as bad. And yet here Samuel is found doing it, but he is called righteous as he does it. Now it's because he's worshiping the one true God. But if you've never studied contextualization, click on my slides, go to this link, study it for a little bit.
I am.
There's a study called where do you fall in the line of contextualization? C1 through C6 and just take that quiz.
Because when we are a Christian in America, we think that we are to worship and do things in one particular way. And while we should do the things that are verbatim that it says in Scripture, there are some things, sometimes, whether it's dress, whether it's the format house or within a church building, whether it's other things that if you go to a different country, you guys are going to look loony if you try to do the same things that we do here, there.
So contextualization is a huge study of essentially finding how do we do the correct things within context. And if you ever get into those commentaries we talked about at the beginning of this class, this is a passage where people talk a lot about contextualization.
So in 1st Samuel 9, I want to point out one thing that is huge, though. This is big, big, big when it comes to the life of Saul, and it's his description in 1st Samuel 9 we have this story of him with the donkeys, him searching for donkeys. But there are two descriptions of him in this text, and I want to ask you guys what you sense from each one.
1 Samuel 9:1 describes this. There is a Benjamite, a man of standing, whose name was Kish, son of Abael, the son of Zeruor, the son of Becoreth, the son of Ophiah of Benjamin. Kish had a son named Saul, as handsome, a young man as could be found anywhere in Israel. And he was a head taller than anyone else. So the text starts by describing Saul in that way.
And then we have Saul speak and Saul speaking of himself. Later on in the text said, after, Saul decides to say after, Samuel says, I'm going to make you a king, but am I not a Benjamite from the smallest tribe of Israel? And is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me?
What's the difference between these two introductions to the person of Saul that we find here?
We have the initial text saying, this guy Saul is a great man. He's a head taller than anybody else. He's super handsome, which is just a crazy thing to add in.
But then we have Saul's description of himself, and he's saying, why are you picking me? Am I not the least?
Am I not the youngest?
Am I like. Why would you say such a thing to me, Samuel? So from the very start, if you're a reader of the Hebrew Bible, what you're going to recognize is that Saul is a man off the bat from chapter nine. When he's introduced who is in conflict with himself, he is both thought of as great and he's thought of as not great.
Interestingly enough, here's.
I just think this is fascinating.
In the Hebrew text, there are multiple words for the same thing.
We could call somebody who's tall, like high of stature, we could call the same person multiple things to describe their height in the end. Well, sometimes the Hebrew language specifically uses certain words because they have double meanings.
What's very interesting with the very first description of Saul is, is he's called taller than anyone else in 1st Samuel 9. 1. But the word for tall used there is not often used in the Hebrew text. And it's the exact same word that means arrogant.
So when you're reading this picture of Saul, if you're a Hebrew reader, you find out, oh, there's a tall guy.
But like, I get the vibe here, he's probably arrogant. This might be a situation that we're not really, like, going to be a fan of him. But then we get to Saul's description of himself and he says, who am I? Am I not the least of these? And in the back of your mind, you're kind of working through like, well, what does this mean? Is he a tall, arrogant guy? Or is he a guy who thinks that he's humble?
Just a note on this as well. I put it at the very bottom. There's a lot of words on the screen, but there's another Saul in the Bible from the tribe of Benjamin, if you haven't thought of that before.
So we see who that Saul was originally named after.
So 1st Samuel 9 Saul is anointed, but 1st Samuel 1011 is when he's actually made king. And fascinatingly, in 1st Samuel 10 through 11 there might be a hint or two, but for the most part I can find nothing negative about Saul from 1st Samuel 10:11. He seems like a very positive guy. And we'll talk about this section over here, but here's what 1st Samuel 10 mentions like following him being anointed as king. As Saul turned to leave Samuel, God changed Saul's heart, and all the signs were fulfilled that day.
Later on 1st Samuel 10:26, 27, Saul went home to his home in Gibeah, accompanied by some valiant men whose hearts God had touched.
But scoundrels said, how can this fellow save us? They despised him and they brought him no gifts, essentially to the day where he became king.
But Saul kept silent.
Later on, this crazy story happens where this group of people, the Ammonites, I believe, attack some tribes within Israel. And these tribes say, let us make peace. And they say, we'll make peace if all of your people cut their right eye out and give it to us, which is not a good thing.
So all these people are weeping. Saul, in his early days of kingship, says, what is wrong with everyone? Why are they weeping? They repeated to him what these men of Jabesh had said. When Saul heard their words, the Spirit of God came powerfully upon him, and he burned with anger. In the following verses, he rescues them. He saves them. And it talks about how he saved them with God's help. And then the people said to Samuel, who was it that asked, shall Saul reign over us? Turn these men over so that we may put them to death? But Saul says, no one will be put to death today, for the Lord has rescued Israel.
So you're reading 1st Samuel 10:11, and there's this original conflict in chapter nine. But it's like, all right, maybe Saul's a pretty good guy. God has changed his heart. He's doing all these things on behalf of God. It's a fascinating, fascinating picture of the person Saul. And the one thing that I did want to discuss very briefly in this class is just, do you guys look at this as a negative or positive?
When Samuel had all Israel come forward by tribes, the tribe. So he's anointed Saul, but he has to be made king. So all of Israel comes forward and they begin taking lots. And we already know who's been anointed, so we know what's going to happen as they're taking lots. Benjamin was chosen. They brought the tribe of Benjamin forward. Montruse's clan was chosen.
Saul, son of Kish, was taken. But when they looked for him, he was not to be found. So they inquired further of the Lord, has the man come here yet? And the Lord said, yes, he has hidden himself among the supplies.
There is a great debate over whether this set of verses is trying to say something positive or something negative about the person of Saul. And I would claim that it's actually saying both in a way. From one perspective.
The Lord has anointed Saul.
He has had a miraculous thing occur to him in the prophesying and other things that he has done prior to this to know that God has anointed me as king.
And yet in the midst of being anointed, he's too scared to come forward and is hiding amongst the baggage that obviously displays a lack of trust with God. From the other side of things, though, what did God originally in Deuteronomy 17 and other passages that we have in Scripture, what did God warn his rulers of the people of Israel? What did God warn them of?
Arrogance.
Does Saul here look like a person who's arrogant?
Based on everything we've seen from him so far, he does not.
So there might be some good and some bad to be found there.
I want to bookmark this for later. We're going to talk about this a few chapters from now. But as Saul was prophesying, 1st Samuel 10, this phrase popped up where they said, is Saul among the prophets?
When I was in Israel, I found out that this is still a common phrase that's used today.
Ultimately, this phrase is used by their people to mean that person is doing something that I never expected them to do, like I would never see him doing that thing.
Esau among the prophets was originally used to describe a man of humble beginnings who was prophesying amongst God's people.
Now, at the end of the story of Saul, what we're going to see later on, the same exact phrase is used, but it's no longer used because he's the humble man from little beginnings, it's used from a different standpoint.
So 1st Samuel 12 is interesting. You have 1st Samuel 9, 10, 11.
This king rises upon the scene. He seemingly, we got the questionable, like is he arrogant, tall? No, he seems humble. He seems kind of nice. We have this questionable thing going on about him, but he's seeming pretty good. And then first Samuel 12, I would describe it as Samuel goes out with a bang.
Samuel here in 1st Samuel 12 essentially passes leadership, godly leadership of the people of Israel from himself into Saul's hands. And as he says this, he gives a going away speech that I think any of you who are getting close to retirement would probably love to give in your jobs because he just says everything that is on his mind.
But at the end of this portion of scripture, here's what he says. Now remember, everything with Saul for the most part has gone well so far.
We'll start in verse 16. So that's a little bit of the ways down. Now then, stand still and see this great thing the Lord is about to do before your eyes.
Is not, is it not wheat harvest now, which is a time of no rain and thunder. I will call on the Lord to send thunder and rain, and you will realize what an evil thing you did in the eyes of the Lord. When you asked for a king, Samuel called on the Lord. They had thunder and rain and the people stood in awe of the Lord and of Samuel. The people said, pray to your Lord, your God, for your servants, that we won't die, for we have added to all our other sins the evil of asking for a king.
Don't be afraid, says Samuel. You've done all this evil, yet don't turn away from the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. And then he mentions what's been said multiple times throughout the rest of scripture, essentially just trust in God. So we have this crazy scene, 1st Samuel 12, where Samuel flips the table and he's just like, you think it's good, just get ready.
And then first Samuel 13 happens.
Now here's this is a very interesting question on the right side. I want to see some thoughts real quick.
In 1st Samuel 10, two years before Saul officially gets to the point of turning away from God, Samuel prophesies and says, when you go to Gilgal, I'll surely come down to you to sacrifice burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. But you must wait sacrifice seven days until I arrive first. Samuel 13.
Two years later, Samuel is in Gilgal. He's about to fight a battle, and he waits seven days.
After seven days, Samuel does not show up.
Saul seemingly wants the Lord to be on their side. So Saul decides to offer the sacrifices himself.
Samuel shows up a day later and says, what have you done?
Saul replied, when I saw the men were scattering and that you did not come at the set time that the Philistines were assembling, I thought, now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal. And I have not sought the Lord's favor. So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering. You've done a foolish thing, Samuel said. You have not kept the command of the Lord your God.
If you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure. The Lord has sought a man after his own heart.
Following this statement, Samuel leaves Gilgal, goes up to Gibeah and Benjamin and Saul counted the men, which is essentially saying, I no longer trust in God. I trust in my men. And they numbered 600.
Is it fair for Saul to have been stripped of his kingship?
Samuel told him, wait seven days and I'll be there.
Wait seven days.
He arrives in Gilgal and what does he do?
He waits seven days.
Samuel doesn't show up.
So he decides to elohim to God to offer sacrifices on behalf of the people.
Samuel shows up a day late and says, the Lord has turned against you. He has stripped the kingdom away from you.
Is it fair for him to have been stripped of his kingship? And I'm going to enlighten you guys to my own studies. And if you disagree with me, just keep it to yourself and we'll talk about it.
Never.
But in the text of Samuel, I think there is something that is very vital to understand, and that is that only God is able to see man's heart.
Only God is able to see man's heart.
And from the very beginning, I think that God truly did know Saul's heart and what it could become.
So you can debate all day whether it's seven days or whatever else. I feel like at some point the kingdom was going to be stripped of from him.
But on a separate situation. If you guys have never studied monochronic and polychronic time, I challenge you to do it. Almost all of you, especially engineers in here, view time as monochronic. I am a strong proponent that Scripture views the right way to view time as polychronic.
If you've never studied this, I challenge you to study it. I challenge you to give me one example of Jesus viewing time as monochronic.
But this is something that will hit you in between your eyes because it is a very, very interesting study.
All right. Ask me about a wedding in Honduras and I'll Describe Polychronic time. 1st Samuel 14, Saul plays God and fails immediately after the king stripped from him. This very interesting situation happens where Jonathan goes and attacks the Philistines who are up against the Israelites, and he has victory because of God. However, and this whole slide will describe it. However, in the midst of him going, Saul doesn't know. And Saul makes this rule and says, until everybody is destroyed on that side, not a person is going to eat over here.
So then his own son, on the way back from defeating this group, decides to eat honey. And it enlightens his eyes.
Saul comes before God and he says, I'm going to speak to God. He's going to respond back to me. And God is silent. After God is silent, he said, we have to figure out why God is silent. We're going to cast lots. We're going to destroy somebody, even if it's my own son who has done me harm. They draw lots. Jonathan's name is John. He says, what have you done? Jonathan said, I ate some honey, dad. And he says, surely you're going to die this day. And then the people rescued Jonathan from Saul.
What's the point of 1st Samuel 14?
Saul begins to try to play God and he is failing.
He thinks he knows certain things that he doesn't know. He thinks he has the power to make certain laws when he doesn't have the power. He thinks he can predict the future. He thinks he is over life and death. But ultimately none of that's true. What's the message here?
The king is no longer from humble beginnings, he's becoming arrogant.
The other Saul of Scripture has an opposite view.
Saul. And by the way, his name never changes to Paul. If you guys didn't know that Paul is his like Greek name, Saul is his Hebrew name. Lord never changes Saul's name.
It just depends on where he is.
So Saul, Paul in the New Testament says this. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me.
Ultimately, God did not take it away. And he said, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Later on So I delight in my weaknesses and insults and hardships and persecutions and difficulties. For when I am weak, I am strong.
1st Samuel 15 Kingdom is finally and officially taken from Saul. He is de anointed as king because he keeps King Agag alive as he attempts to play God himself.
Later on in this text, Samuel says in 1st Samuel 15:17 Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king and he sent you a mission. And ultimately he has failed in that mission.
Some questions to think about later this week as you guys go on thinking about Saul and the depressing story that this is.
Success sometimes can be a bad thing, and we live in a culture with a lot of success.
How can we choose to be people that make good God our king rather than ourselves?
Some of you in this room may have come from humble beginnings.
Have you left that thought process?
Have you become your own king? Have you become a person that trusts more in yourself than in the person who is truly able to make us great?
First Samuel, chapter nine starts with Saul having the Spirit of God flow through him.
It ends with describing not God, but Saul himself, being the person who is to go out and fight the Philistines. And then finally he pleads with Samuel and he says, stay with me so that I may worship the Lord your God.
Saul's story is tragic, but sadly, it's a very, very relatable story to us today.
Next week we will slowly begin working through the story because we finally are getting to David in the Life of David. So thank you guys for coming tonight.
