OK. So this series is entitled "Lessons from the Kings-
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times". This is the first lesson in
the series and it's entitled "King Saul- On the Edge of Greatness".
This series of lessons, just to give you an idea of what you have come into here, this
series of lessons profiles the lives in the times of a lot of the
kings who served as leaders of God's people.
High profile, some of them very well-known, some of them not so well-known,
as we said. But even the ones that we don't know very
well, like we know King Saul, we know King David, but there are others we don't know as
much. Their names are not as familiar to us. But if they're in the Bible,
if God has included them in the record of his people,
usually there's a pretty good reason for that.
Usually there's a rich treasure of human experience that we can learn from.
Paul the Apostle, in speaking about the lives of the
Old Testament characters, said that their life experiences were recorded and
kept as a teaching device for subsequent generations of believers.
In First Corinthians 10:11. Let me just get
this light up there. He says, "Now these things happen to them,"
meaning the people in the Old Testament. "These things happen to them as an example,
and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come."
And so we study the Old Testament for a lot of reasons.
But studying characters, the individual
lives, the biographies of men and women in the Old Testament,
studying that usually gives us an insight to how God
interacts with people because we see him interacting with people.
So we start this series entitled "Lessons from the Kings- Ancient Wisdom from Modern Times",
where we're either going to look at the life or a specific
episode in one of these kings rule,
and see if we can draw some practical lessons for our own lives as Christians in the lives we live today.
So this series, the last series we did was about doctrine and
we learned about doctrine. This series is more about people.
And the takeaways are not going to be concepts, the take away from this class are
going to be practical things that we can use in our own lives.
Of course these men, they lived in very different social and cultural context
that we do today. But we share the same belief in God and the same
desire to know and to do His will that they did. They prayed
Lord, please let me know what you want me to do. And today what do we pray? Please Lord, let
me know what you want me to do. So it's the same type of experience.
We also share similar human natures weakened by sin and
subject to temptation and failure, as well as
subject to forgiveness and restoration, as they did as well.
Also, how God dealt with them is similar to how God deals with us today.
And so examining their relationship with the Lord will be quite, I think,
illuminating for us because we have a relationship with the Lord that we're trying to develop as well.
So we begin with King Saul, the first king of Israel
appointed by God. And in studying his life and reign,
in this and the next two lessons, because there's so much about him I couldn't put it all into just
one lesson, we're going to see how one person who began his
service to the Lord as King, how that person
managed to lose his bid for greatness because of personal weakness.
In the end Saul will teach us, actually he's going to
teach us what not to do as a servant of God, a servant who
had great, great potential. I mean boy, if anyone had
potential it was Saul but he kinda just, he dropped the ball. We're going to see
and look at his life and see what happens.
So the story of Saul is set in that time period when the Jews had
entered the promised land after their wanderings in the desert for
40 years. Each tribe had been allotted their territory and
they were busy setting up cities and towns that were formerly held
by the pagan nations, that had previously inhabited the land, which they
inherited from God. So the Jews, after a time, they had become
less zealous in eradicating the nations according to God's
original command through Moses. And instead of eradicating the nations and
getting rid of them, wiping them out, they'd begun to make treaties
with them and enslave them instead of eliminating them.
And actually the problem there was they chose the easy way.
It was a lot easier to make a treaty with them and to tax
them and earn money off of their taxes and off of
their labor then to go to war with them and completely destroy them. And God had told
them what he wanted them to do was to destroy these pagan nations because if they
didn't their influence would come back and pollute.
their own religion and their own lifestyle.
So they took the easy way. Because of their disobedience
God sustained certain pagan nations that they couldn't wipe out.
And he used these pagan nations to punish the
Jews for their stubbornness. And one such nation
was the Philistines. Now they lived on a small strip of land
along the Mediterranean coast. And they were fierce enemies of the Jews for many decades.
Today, where the Philistines lived, is called the Gaza Strip.
Who lives there? Right? Palestinians, they live there.
And what are they doing to the Jews? The same thing they were doing at the very beginning.
It's amazing how history mirrors itself thousands of years later.
So during this period of time, about a thousand years before Christ,
God ruled the Jews directly. It was a theocracy and
He ruled the Jews through laws and commands that He had given Moses that the
people were to follow. And then from time to time he would send a special leader or a savior.
In the Bible we call them judges.
And these people would help the nation in their time of trial and trouble. So, they'd disobey God.
They'd be attacked, they'd be in all kinds of trouble. The people would cry out for some sort of help.
God would raise up one of these leaders to come in and help them overcome their enemies.
Now we read about these
people, these men and women, in the book of Judges. People like Samson and Gideon and Deborah.
These people were appointed by God for
a special mission to lead or to rescue the people when they were in danger.
Now, the last and greatest of these judges
was Samuel, who was dedicated as a child by his parents to the service of the Lord.
I think we're familiar with his story. He was the last great judge of Israel and he was also a prophet.
We read about that in First Samuel 3 Verse 20 and also an Acts 3:24.
And he served as priest, offering up sacrifices on behalf of the people.
So he had a kind of a multi faceted ministry, prophet and priest and leader.
Now during his lifetime, this is an important background fact here,
during Samuel's lifetime of ministry, the Israelites were
constantly attacked and threatened by their enemy the Philistines.
In his first book, First Samuel, Samuel describes the state of affairs
taking place as the Jews suffered defeat after defeat at the
hands of the Philistines. Now the climax occurs when
the pagan nation actually captures the ark of the Covenant from the Jews.
They capture it and they bring it into their territory.
Now we know that the ark was a box like container with angel
statues on the top, on the cover, that housed the stone,
originally inside were the stone tablets of the commandments,
Aaron's rod, Moses's brother, the rod that budded there, Aaron's
rod and also a jar containing manna.
That's what was originally in the ark. By the time of First Samuel, the only thing that was left in the ark
were the tablets, the commandments themselves. Now the Jews had come to believe
that if this vessel was in their possession they were invincible in battle.
They had come to believe this, so long as we have the ark with us,
we're good to go. Nobody can beat us. Of course, it was obedience
to the Lord and faith in the Lord that actually guaranteed the victory.
That's what guaranteed the victory. But the Jews had wandered so far away from this
reality and had begun to trust the object representing
God's presence instead of God Himself. Almost like a lucky charm. Right?
People have a special medal, I've seen people have a religious medal
and say, oh this is my lucky medal. Oh boy, that's wrong in so many ways.
Well this is pretty much the attitude that they had. So long as we got this ark with us,
this is a guarantee we're going to win every battle.
So the loss of the ark wasn't just losing a piece of their history. It was a great
psychological blow to the Jews and it demoralized them because they thought
if our enemies can take the ark, well, they can take us.
If they can walk right in and take the ark away from us, well, they'll be able to defeat us.
So a little later on in Samuel chapters 5 to 7,
we see how God punishes the Philistines for actually having taken the
ark and keeping it, to the point where they actually give the Ark
back to the Jews because it's causing so many problems for them.
One of the amusing stories is that they put the ark in the temple with their own god.
And they have the statue of their god in there and then when they go in the next day the
statue of their god has fallen off the shelf and is laying flat down on the ground. You know what I'm saying?
Then they start having illnesses and all kinds of all kinds of problems.
So in First Samuel 7 we see Samuel lead the nation in a period of
repentance and restoration which ultimately produced a temporary peace
between themselves and their enemies and the Philistines and others.
Remember they had peace because they returned to the Lord not because they won a battle
against the Philistines. So later in life Samuel
appointed his sons as judges over Israel. But his sons
were not really anointed by God. They were just appointed by Samuel. He figures, well who
else is going to be judge? My sons will be judges. And of course we
read in Samuel that his sons were corrupt as leaders
of the of the people. They were crooks. And so it seemed to the nation
that Samuel's sons would not be as effective in leadership as Samuel had been.
So the people, and here's the key point, not waiting
upon God's direction, demanded that
Samuel appoint them a king to rule over the land.
In other words, they took matters into their own hands. So there were two mistakes here.
One mistake was that Samuel, instead of going to the Lord and asking
the Lord who will take my place, will you raise up another leader? He didn't do that.
He just went ahead and appointed his own sons as leaders.
And then the second mistake was the nation of Israel, seeing that
Samuel's sons were corrupt, instead of them going to the Lord
and asking Lord, please raise up a leader for us. They just brushed all that
aside and said, you know what? We don't want these guys they're corrupt. We want a king. And why did
they want a king? Because they looked around at the other nations and the other nations, they
had kings, with the pomp and the ceremony and the glory of their king.
They wanted a king too.
So Samuel warns them that a human king is going to create as
many problems as he would solve. But the people were adamant
in wanting a rulership style resembling that of their pagan neighbors.
So God instructs Samuel to go ahead in his
search for a Jewish king to lead the nation. And he reminds Samuel
that in doing this thing the Jewish people were not rejecting Samuel or his
sons even. They were actually rejecting God Himself,
who had been their king. All right. So I've given you this
little background information here. We haven't read all of the verses in Samuel because I don't have time.
But I'm giving you this kind of background of information to set up the idea of,
where does Saul come from? So these are the things that have been happening in
the background that set the stage for
anointing a king. And the first king that they're going to anoint is Saul.
So into this historical context steps Saul the
first human king of Israel.
So the story of Saul's time as king is described in First Samuel chapter 9.
So here we go. If you have your Bibles you can open them to first Samuel chapter 9.
And as always, I'll throw up the verses up on the screen
as well, if you prefer doing that. So the story of Saul's time as king, as I say,
described in First Samuel chapter 9. First of all the choice of Saul as king.
We begin with his original anointing by Samuel and
Saul's reaction to that anointing.
Let's read that. It says, "Now there was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish the son of Abiel,
the son of Zeror, the son of the Becorath, the son of Aphiah, the son of a Benjamite,
a mighty man of valor. He had a son whose name was Saul, a choice and
handsome man, and there was not a more handsome person than he among the sons of Israel;
from his shoulders and up he was taller than any of the people.
Now the donkeys of Kish, Saul's father, were lost. So Kish said to his
son Saul, 'take now with you one of the servants, and arise, go search for the donkeys.'
He passed through the hill country of Ephraim and passed through the land of Shalishah,
but they did not find them. Then they passed through the land of Shaalim, but they were not there.
Then he passed through the land of the Benjamites, but they did not find them.
When they came to the land of Zuph, Saul said to his servant who was with him,
'Come, and let us return, or else my father will cease to be concerned about the donkeys
and will become anxious for us." So we learn just from these
opening verses that Saul was from the smallest of the tribes,
Tribe of Benjamin, located to the
west of Judah, nearest the Philistine Nations. His village was
nearest where the Philistines lived.
His father was respected for his courage and honor.
And Saul himself was taller than average and good looking. Very rare in the
Bible, that the Bible describes the person's
physical appearance, very rare. We have for Saul, we have a little bit for David,
for Esther, that she was beautiful, for very few characters, however, the Bible describes.
But here we're describing Saul as being tall and handsome.
He was also quite attached to his father. And as we read
the rest of the chapter we're also going to find out that although he believed in God and
the law, we're going to see that he was not really well versed in the word
itself and the commands of God. And many times he would rely
on a servant to explain to him how one was to approach a prophet, for example. He had no, no idea.
Now as the story of chapter 9 continues we see him and his servant detour from the
original task of finding the lost donkeys to seeking a prophet who
might give them help in their journey. If that sounds
strange to you, yeah, that is kind of strange.
This was an unusual request for a prophet. And in it we see Saul's penchant for
using spiritual powers to serve purely
financial or physical needs. He doesn't ask the prophet
to enlighten him, to give him a message from the Lord. He thinks, well, let's ask the
prophet, he knows everything. Maybe he can tell us where the donkey's are.
I mean you see what I'm saying? Pretty down to earth type of thinking.
He was not a very spiritually minded man.
So upon meeting him, Samuel reassures him that the animals are safe at home
and he continues by pronouncing a gracious blessing on Saul.
And Saul, at this point is confused and he's a little suspicious and he
responds kind of warily to Samuel's words. So let's keep reading,
First Samuel 9:17 - 21. It says, "When Samuel saw
Saul, the Lord said to him, 'Behold, the man of whom I spoke to you!
This one shall rule over my people.' Then Saul approached Samuel in the gate and said,
'Please tell me where the seer's house is.'
And Samuel answered Saul and said, 'I am the seer. Go up before me to the
high place, for you shall eat with me today; and in the morning I will let you go, and I will
tell you all that is on your mind. As for your donkeys which
were lost three days ago, do not set your mind on them, for they have been found.
And for whom is all that is desirable in Israel? Is it not for you and for
all your father's household? Saul replied,
'Am I not Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel,
and my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin?
Why then do you speak to me in this in this way?'"
See what I'm saying? Samuel tells him about the donkeys
before Saul even asks him about the donkeys. So right away you know
there's something going on here with the prophet. And then he says something very
gracious to him, that his family will be exalted, that he himself will be
exalted. And Saul is like whoa, What's going on here?
So at the dinner that they share later on, Samuel will
give to Saul the honored place at the table and the choicest portions signifying
his new rule as leader. And then later on in Chapter 10,
Samuel anoints Saul as king and he describes to Saul
several things that are going to take place that day which will prove that
his appointment is from God. I mean let's be a little sympathetic to Saul, as well here.
Here's a guy looking for some animals that have
wandered away from his property and he bumps into a prophet who tells him, you know what?
You're going to be the king. I mean, I don't blame Saul at
this point for being a little suspicious.
And so to allay his fears and his suspicions Samuel is going to prophesy.
He's going to tell them, in advance, several things that are going to happen to
Saul in the coming day as a way of confirming
that what Samuel is saying, as a prophet, is indeed true.
So he prophesizes, first of all,
that his animals have been found. Then he describes his father's feelings about him.
He even explains in detail the people that he's going to meet and
the events that will take place in the hours to come as he returns home.
Now the most significant of these things being the fact that
at some point Saul will meet a group of prophets. And Samuel tells him
when he meets this group of prophets he himself will begin to prophesy along with them.
Now this is significant. I mean remember now,
this is the person who didn't know how to approach a prophet.
He asked his servant, imagine his slave, "How do you go about
approaching a prophet?" He didn't even know how to approach a prophet.
And now Samuel said to him, this very day you're going to speak like a prophet,
as a way of demonstrating to Saul
what was going to take place and also the
power of Samuel's predictions. So all of these signs,
Samuel gives him to confirm that his anointing is from God.
That's the point I'm trying to make here. Now, finally after all of this is explained
Samuel instructs Saul on what he must do in response.
This the next passage in chapter 10 verse 8. Again I'm summarizing big
sections of Samuel here because we don't have time to read the whole story. And I think many of you are
familiar with this story. So in chapter 10 verse 8 he says,
"And you shall go down before me to Gilgal; and behold, I will come down to you to offer
burnt offerings and sacrifice peace offerings. You shall wait seven days
until I come to you and show you what you should do."
I want you to remember this command because we're going to come back to it in our next lesson.
OK? So after his meeting with Samuel,
Saul returns home and he experiences all the things predicted by
Samuel but he doesn't repeat to his family what took place concerning his
anointing as king. He's still reluctant to believe and accept what has taken place.
Yeah, he's seen all the miraculous, well, miraculous that's a strong word, but he's seen all the prophecies
being fulfilled about him in that one day. But he's not ready to
come home and say to his father... His father says,
"Hey, the donkeys came back. That's nice. So how was your day?"
And Saul will say, "Well, you know, it was an OK day. By the way I was anointed as
king of the nation." He wasn't ready to do that.
And so in chapter 10 verse 17 and forward,
we see about the public selection of Saul as king.
So the prophet anoints him privately, gives him
heavenly signs, if you wish, that his anointing is true.
But then there has to be a public anointing. And so in order to do
that, Samuel calls a gathering of all the people and he begins
by chastising them for having rejected the Lord's rulership over them and
choosing an earthly king instead.
And then he informs them that despite this rejection God has granted their request
and he will furnish them with a king. Now Saul proceeds
to take lots from among the tribes to narrow the field and then the
from the heads of families in order to narrow it down to one particular person and even
through this process, Saul comes out as the chosen one.
You need to understand, the people, all they see is a drawing of lots to choose a leader.
Right? They have lots, out of the 12 tribes,
they pick one straw, whoop, the short straw, we don't
know exactly how they did it. Oh the short straw goes to the tribe of Benjamin. OK, another bunch of straws,
whoop, the short straw goes to the family of so-and-so. Another, whoop,
the short straw goes to Kish, whoop, the short straw goes to
Saul, the son of ... you see what I'm saying? There's all random
drawings in front of the people because the people their thinking, OK, this is the prophet,
this is how he's going to whittle down the contenders, if you wish, to the one who will be anointed.
But to Saul, who's watching this,
he's seeing yet another manifestation of the proof
that God has chosen him. Because even through this random process it still comes about
that he's the one who's chosen as the king.
And once again we see Saul's reluctance because when the
people search for him to inform him of his being chosen, where do they find him?
He's in the baggage area hiding among the suitcases.
So let's read a small portion. First Samuel verses 21 to
24. "Then he brought the tribe of Benjamin near by its families, and the
Matrite family was taken. And Saul the son of Kish was taken; but when they looked for him,
he could not be found. Therefore they inquired further of the Lord, 'Has the man come here yet?'
So the Lord said, 'Behold he is hiding him by the baggage.'
Let's see if I have another passage. Yeah. "So they ran and took him from there, and when he stood among the
people, he was taller than any of the people from his shoulders upward. Samuel said to all the
people, 'Do you see him whom the Lord has chosen? Surely there is no one like him
among the people.' So all the people shouted and said, 'Long live the king!'"
Now after he was chosen we see that there
are some people among the group, among the crowd, who refused to accept him from
day one and others who become devoted to him and
urged to do so by God's hand and influence in their hearts.
So like any political thing the minute you select the leader, what happens?
Some people don't like that guy. They're not his guy and that's exactly what happens here.
I want you to remember that also because that factors into something as we go along.
Now, if you were writing a book
about Saul's life and his reign as king a good title for that book would
be "On the Edge of Greatness." This title would work
because very early on Saul showed the glimmer
of being a great king and a great man of God.
Samuel describes his finest hour in Chapter 11
beginning in verse 1. So let's read that. It says,
"Now Nahash the Ammonite came up and besieged Jabesh-glead; and all the
men of Jabesh said to Nahash, 'Make a covenant with us and we will serve you.' But
Nahash the Ammonite said to them, "I will make it with you on this condition, that I will gouge out
the right eye of every one of you, thus I will make it a
reproach on all Israel.' The elders of Jabesh said to him, 'Let us alone for
seven days, that we may send messengers throughout the territory of Israel. Then, if there is no
one to deliver us, we will come out to you.' Then the messengers came to
Gibeah of Saul and spoke these words in the hearing of the people, and all the
people lifted up their voices and wept. Now behold, Saul was coming from
the field behind the oxen, and he said, 'What is the matter with the people that they weep?'
So they related to him the words of the men of Jabesh. Then the Spirit of God came upon Saul
mightily when he heard these words, and he became very angry.
He took a yoke of oxen and cut them in pieces, and sent them throughout the territory of Israel by the hand of
messengers, saying, 'Whoever does not come out after Saul and after Samuel, so
shall it be done to his oxen.' Then the dread of the Lord fell on the people, and they came out
as one man. He numbered them in Bezek; and the sons of Israel were
300,000, and the men of Judah 30,000. They said to the messengers who
had come, 'Thus you shall say to the men of Jabesh-gilead, 'Tomorrow, by the time of the sun is
hot, you will have deliverance.' So the messengers went and told the men of Jebesh; and they were glad.
Then the men of Jabesh said, 'Tomorrow we will come out to you, and you may do to us
whatever seems good to you.' The next morning Saul put the people in three
companies; and they came into the midst of the camp at the morning watch and struck down the
Ammonites until the heat of the day. Those who survive were scattered, so that no two of
them were left together. Then the people said to Samuel, 'Who is he that said, 'Shall Saul
reign over us? Bring the men, that we may put them to death.
But Saul said, 'Not a man shall be put to death this day, for
today the Lord has accomplished deliverance in Israel.' Then Samuel said to the people,
'Come and let us go to Gilgal and renew the kingdom there.'"
So, Saul manages to rise to the occasion
and the challenge of the enemy. He galvanizes his forces and wages a
completely successful war against the Ammonites. And then when victory
is in his hand, he shows that he can be gracious by sparing the lives of
those who are opposed to his selection on that day. Remember, I said there were some,
when he was anointed king, who said, "Hey, he's not our king." That's not the guy we want.
And then after he proves his courage and wins the
battle, then the people on his side say, "Hey, let's go find those people who didn't
want you to be king. Let's take care of business right now. Let's wipe them out."
And what does he do? No, not on this day. He was gracious to
his enemies on this day because it was a day of victory. He wanted to give glory to
God for the victory and that would have spoiled that particular offering to the Lord.
And then as I said, finally he gives glory to God for the victory and he shows great
spiritual leadership at a critical moment in the nation's history.
So we see this very happy episode end, and it ends well.
And the people then unanimously
confirmed Saul, anointing him as king with sacrifices and joyful praise to God.
Looks like a happy ending. It's like a happy ending to a movie.
And so the chapter ends with a final warning by Samuel to the people
that in order to continue the blessings and the protection of the Lord they
and their new king must obey and serve him
only if not even their new king won't be able to save them.
So we leave off the story for this week, in our class, with Saul at the high
point of his rule, having consolidated his power and position with the
people through this swift victory and statesman like conduct towards his detractors.
All is well in Israel for the moment.
But in our next lesson we're going to begin to look at Saul's tragic decline into madness.
Now even though Saul lived 3000 years ago,
we can draw some pretty relevant lessons which apply to our own lives today,
just from this opening here. We haven't gotten into the meat of the matter,
as far as his life is concerned, just from this opening story of his selection
and his first victory. There are some pretty good life lessons here.
Lesson number one would be, the world usually rejects God's servants.
Saul was not unanimously
accepted at first and even he himself had trouble believing that
God had chosen him. Now this is quite normal for those who are
called into God's service. They doubt themselves.
They're not always accepted by other people. It happens it even happens in the church.
I mean, we go through a selection process and perhaps we
choose an elder and we install a new elder or couple of elders,
we always hear some people that have a little bit of backtalk. Well, I don't know about that guy.
Man, I saw him once, he lost his temper. I don't even think he should be an elder.
Nothing has changed.
Human nature is the same. If you've become a Christian
or if you've tried to convince others of your faith. Don't be surprised if
not too many are happy for you. I remember,
Lise and I, we became Christians pretty much at the same time, within months of each other.
And we were so happy. I mean it was so wonderful, this new
life in Christ. And we would read the Bible and we'd say, "Oh look at this,
look at this. I never knew this. I never saw this." It was so crystal clear.
How could anybody miss it?
Until we tried to share that with our family.
The best reaction, the very best reaction we had, was something
like, "Oh that's nice for you. Good for you.
Just don't bring your thing, whatever it is, over to my house.
Kind of a polite rejection. And then after a while it was,
"Look we don't want to hear about the Bible anymore." Somebody in my family said, "You know,
I know that you know the Bible well and when I want to know something in the Bible,
I'll call you. But until that time, don't even bother opening it."
And at that time ,boy, I was so hurt. I was so,
oh, so demoralized, like all the air let out of a balloon.
I didn't have a lot of experience as a Christian. But after a while I realized, Oh, of course, that's the way it is.
That's the way it is. The world doesn't applaud you for becoming a Christian.
If you stake a claim to be with God,
to now walk with the Lord in obedience or service, this means that you've rejected the world and
you've rejected the values of the world. Don't be surprised if the world's not happy with you.
Be prepared for the world to reject you back,
to disown you because of your faith.
Another lesson from this first episode,
be careful what you ask for.
The people against God's wishes, asked for a king
and Samuel warned them that a human king would devour their wealth
through taxes, would take their daughters as servants and wives,
and turn their sons into soldiers, in order to prosecute, in order to conduct wars.
For what? Well, for more land and more wealth and so on and so forth.
But they insisted. They could have said, "Samuel, well, maybe you're right.
I mean, you've been our judge for 30, 40 years and you've never steered us wrong. Maybe you're
right in this too. Maybe we should reconsider that. Maybe we should pray and ask the
Lord to raise up a new leader for us." They didn't do that. No, they insisted, that's what we want.
And so they received their king and all of the problems
along with the king. So what's the lesson for us today?
Well, God will allow you to pursue people and things that are bad for you,
if you insist on doing it. If we continue to
resist what our conscience is saying, your conscience is saying,
"Excuse me, I don't think you ought to be doing that." Shhh quiet.
I turned up the sound of the music to drown out the voice of my conscience.
If you insist on going against your conscience, if you insist on going against God's word,
you'll get your way. God will let you do.
Unless you are intensely seeking his will in a certain matter, He's going to allow you to chase
after and obtain your heart's desire, even if it destroys you. You see that's
the downside of free will. Free will is
what animates us. Free will is what separates us from the animals and the rocks and the trees.
That's the good part. The bad part is that free will
also can permit us to choose what is wrong, and thus destroy us.
This is why Jesus instructs us to pray. He says, "Lead us not into
temptation," Matthew 6:13, so that God will
help us seek after those things that come from above and not simply the things that come from below.
OK third lesson,
wait for God's anointing. This is the hard one. This is the tricky one.
Note in the story that Samuel tried to anoint his own sons to succeed him.
And they were unsuitable for leadership. He failed to
remember his own experience where God had called him to serve as a judge and prophet and
priest and not Eli, the priest he had served under as a boy.
Note also that the people chose for themselves the type of leader to succeed
Samuel, not waiting for God to send them a messenger or a successor.
So they received the king, but only by default.
Had they waited for God's anointing they would have saved themselves a whole lot of trouble.
So God's anointing is God's blessing,
is God's choice, is God's way. And sometimes
we can know it because it is clearly spelled out in His Word,
"Thou shalt not kill." It's easy. I hate that guy. I think I'm going to kill that guy.
Well, the Bible says, "Thou shalt not kill." Some decisions are pretty easy. "Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not commit adultery." Doesn't mean we don't steal, commit adultery, and kill. It's just it's pretty
clear that we're doing something wrong when we do those things.
But sometimes, it's do I moved to Boston or New York? Do I take the new job or not? Do I get married
now or later? Do I have this friend or that? Sometimes the decisions are not like black and white.
Sometimes, in those cases,
the Word provides us with principles to guide us and
sometimes, and this is the hard one, sometimes we just have to wait for events and
circumstances to move in order to know what is God's
anointing, whether it be a call to ministry or finding a marriage partner or
deciding on a career or a move or a purchase.
If we seek God's anointing and are patient to wait for it, we'll get it.
When Jesus says, "Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find, knock and it
it shall be opened, Matthew 7:7. He's not talking to you about
cars or money or health.
You know seek health, seek money. That's not what He's talking about. He's talking about the anointing.
If you're seeking God's anointing,
God's will, if you're knocking on the door trying to find out what God's will is, if you're
searching for God's will, He said, you're going to find it.
Ask, seek, knock, in your search for God's way for you, in your life,
and you will receive the answer and you will find the way
and you will discover the right door that God
will open for you. And so that's
certainly one, I think, a very prominent lesson from Saul.
He didn't wait for the anointing. He didn't wait to know.
He just barreled ahead and a lot of times we do the same thing. Instead of waiting,
we barrel ahead and many times we make a tragic mistake when we do. So some very good life lessons,
I think, from Saul. Just the very beginning of his reign. We can draw some good stuff.
I believe we'll be able to continue to do that as we as we go forward in our study
of Saul and other kings that we can learn from. That's our lesson for this morning.
Thank you for your attention.