1 Samuel Lesson 12
Confirmation and Coronation of Saul – 1 Samuel
10:17-11:15
Last week someone gave me a question on the content of what we had
taught: why does God anoint Saul before He gives him the choice to accept or
reject God’s plan for his life. Well,
there’s a little confusion in the question.
God anointed Saul to the office and after He anointed He gave Saul a
choice to whether he’s going to be a good king or a bad king, but Saul had no
choice as to whether he’s going to be king or not; there’s no choice left, he
automatically was the king, the question was whether he’s going to be a good
one or a bad one.
Tonight we begin with 1 Samuel 10:17 and here we continue the section
that runs from 8:1 through 15:35, and the them of this whole section is that
God establishes the office of a king and picked Saul as it’s first incumbent,
who of course fails in the process. In
chapter 8 we dealt with how God responded to the people’s human viewpoint
demand for an office of the king with a divine viewpoint design to that
office. In 9:1-10:16 God chose Saul,
that was last week. Now
Now this section being large can be broken down at least into some small
sections:
I’m going to deal with the confirmation of Saul that runs from
Now in
Now here’s what you want to watch; this is a favorite way that the
Hebrew writers had of writing. Here we
have the text, it’s going along fine, very continuous, and then it stops right
at the end of verse 22. Now here we have
“And Samuel called the people together unto the LORD to Mizpah. [18] And
said unto the children of
And the answer is no because this is the way God often does respond to
man’s sinfulness. When man sins God is
angry at our negative volition and for the historic effects it has. But God accommodates Himself to it and moves
through that. The illustration here
would be the nation is on negative volition, they desire an office of the
king. It is bad that they do this because
the Bible is always against socialism and centralized power. Any form of welfarism that robs people of
individual responsibility, any form of centralized power is anti-Biblical. So therefore the Bible in today’s context in
the area of structure of government would tend to be overwhelmingly
conservative. The Bible insists that there
must be a conservation of individual freedom and the destruction of centralized
power. But nevertheless, God allows
centralized power to grow. He allows it
and then cursing turns into blessing because He turns the form of the
centralized power into a revelation of the office of Jesus Christ. And so there is no contradiction in the
attitudes of God; it’s simply the way God responds on any number of occasions
in Scripture to man and his sinful world.
So Samuel calls these people together and he repeats the speech of
chapter 8. Remember that famous
political speech of chapter 8, that’s a classic and those of you who teach
school it would be a fine way of getting the Scripture sneaked into the
classroom and doing it quite honestly, by simply saying that we’re not studying
Christianity, we’re just studying a very famous political speech in the ancient
world, and that’s 1 Samuel 8. And of
course the class would learn some doctrine while they’re learning the famous
political speech but you needn’t mention that too loudly. But 1 Samuel 8 gives us the Biblical
philosophy of government. And 1 Samuel
10 repeats this but in summary form. Here
the stress is on what they have done.
Verse 18, “And said unto the children of Israel, Thus saith the LORD God
of Israel, I brought up Israel out of Egypt, I delivered you out of the hand of
the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all kingdoms, and of all them that
oppressed you.” Notice the emphasis, I,
I, I, all these verbs have one thing as their subject, I. It’s repetition on the work of God and this,
like Deuteronomy, is a reminder of God’s faithfulness. This is always the case whenever you have a
major shift in history that God always announces before He shifts that He, up
to that point has been faithful and that the shift that is now going to happen
is a shift that men have brought upon themselves, not because of God’s lack of
faithfulness, but because of men’s rebellion.
And so there’s a big prologue, a repetition over and over of the same
thing,
Now a parallel type of thing is set up for us in the New Testament with
regard to Christian suffering. The
tendency of believers always is to say that God is insufficient. This is what
Now in the New Testament there’s a promise that we have that is parallel
to the same [can’t understand word] of the logic of this verse and that’s Roman
8:32 where it says that God has provided the New Testament believer with
everything and that if God has saved us, if God has died for us on the cross
and has totally solved the sin problem in the person of Jesus Christ, so that
we can believe and in an instant of time be born again, because of His atoning
work on the cross, we can be born again and move on in the Christian life, then
any other problem out here after we become Christians is trivial compared to
the initial problem of trusting the Lord in the first place, of gaining a
salvation status before God; this problem outweighs all the little ones. So this is why Romans 8:32 tells us that with
the salvation God provides everything; no extra things are left off. You don’t have to seek the baptism of the
Holy Ghost, or seek anything else after you have personally trusted in Jesus
Christ because the New Testament clearly teaches that we are complete in
Christ. There’s no added seeking
necessary. It is all there and it is
just a matter of Christian growth, of utilizing more and more of it.
Now in verse 19 the issue is presented to the nation. This is the final time that Samuel is ever
going to mention this, he’s not going to mention it again. This is his last opportunity to make the
point. “You have this day rejected your
God, who Himself saved you out of all your adversities and your tribulations;
and ye have said unto Him, Nay, but set a king over us. Now, therefore, present yourselves before the
LORD by your tribes, and by your thousands.”
The word “rejected” in the Hebrew is a word which means despised, “and
you have this day despised your God.”
Now how do believers despise the Lord?
Anytime that you face a problem in the Christian life that you do not
give thanks for you are despising your God.
When you face a problem in the Christian life you have many ways of
handling this thing. You can turn around
and get faked out; you can try an end run, try to avoid it, or you can try to
invent another problem and become very obsessed with this other problem which
isn’t a problem, the big problem is here and it’s still sitting there. Or through the faith technique you can drive
right on through the problem. Now that’s
the way God has designed the Christian life to operate. He hasn’t designed the Christian life to be a
conglomeration of crybabies and other types of reactions to life’s
problems.
But when Christians do this, when they fail to take the truth of 1
Corinthians 10:13, that there will never come a problem for which God has not
totally provide complete solutions so that we may be able to bear it, so that
we can more to Romans 8:28 and say “all things work together for good to them
that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose,” when we
fail to respond to this, as 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, “In everything give thanks”
in EVERYTHING give thanks, in EVERYTHING give thanks, “for this is the will of
God in Christ Jesus,” we are despising our God.
We are saying in effect He’s a lousy Savior, He got us legal status with
the Father through His death on the cross but He can’t get us out of the little
jams. He got us out of the big one but
not the little one. And so when we fail
to use the faith technique, every time we do this we despise God’s character
and when we despise God’s character we are wide open tools of Satan every time.
Satan is in the character assassination business and he loves it when you
panic, he loves to knock you off balance, he loves to have you respond to the
pressures of life this way because every time we respond this way we give him
one more plank in his platform and he needs all the planks he can get and it’s
wonderful as far as he’s concerned to have believers freely supply them.
Now in 17 and the end of verse 19 where it says “by your tribes, and by
your thousands” he’s talking about a public choice. Samuel has called the nation to a national
conference and they’re going to use the Urim and the Thummim, which is the
vessels of the high priest, exactly what they were is still a matter of debate,
but it was a “yes/no” type situation.
They would bring the tribes, two tribes at a time, in groups of two
before, and they’d eliminate, this one no, this one no, and finally Benjamin
would be picked out. And then they’d
start down the chain of command, underneath Benjamin, then they’d start working
on the clans, and then when they had the clan found out, then they would deal
with the family. And finally they come to the family of Kish. Now remember, Samuel knows in advance what
the solution is going to be. But here is
where you are seeing the historical confirmation; there is no way that Samuel
can load the dice so it comes out right.
So if God has truly worked through Samuel, then it should be logical,
should it not, that when God the Holy Spirit works through the Urim and the
Thummim you should come out with the same answer. “By the testimony of two or three” is the
truth established in the Word of God.
So therefore this is a test. The
Jews were not these naïve superstitious people that everybody seems to think
these Old Testament people were. They
didn’t know modern science or something so therefore they were very naïve, and
so forth. That can’t be, because here is an obvious illustration of it; they
had one test with Samuel but they could have dismissed this and said oh Samuel,
you’re hearing things; you like this guy because he’s tall; you like this guy
because he’s brilliant, you like this guy because he comes from a good family,
so there could have been a lot of reasons.
But now there’re going to have the second one and that is the Urim and
the Thummim. And the Urim and Thummim
are going to come out with the same test.
So now we’ve got two tests coming out with the same man. So we have a double confirmation that this is
truly the man chosen of God. And he’s
not an unbeliever, he is a believer.
Verse 20, “And when Samuel had caused all the tribes of Israel to come
near, the tribe of Benjamin was taken.”
Verse 21, “When he had caused the tribe of Benjamin to come near by
their families, the family of Matri was taken,” actually it should be the clan,
“and Saul, the son of Kish, was taken,” so here you have the smallest
unit. “And when they sought him, he
could not be found.” Now this is another
one of those humorous incidents in 1 Samuel.
When I translated this I had more fun laughing at the text because this
book… if you want one book in the Bible that shows that God has a sense of
humor it’s this one. Now we’ve seen
several things in Samuel, last week we saw Saul chasing lost asses all over Israel
and today we’re going find him buried under some suitcases. This is going to be a deliberate show by God
to make fun and ridicule the people’s choice of Saul over Jehovah.
You can imagine this, to catch the scene you have to envision something
that’s very, very serious; you have to imagine these emissaries, thousands of
people here, this thing is going on, it’s not being done in a small backyard
some place. This is being done on a wide
open field and you have these emissaries, the tribes apparently are represented
by elders of the family and they’re probably standing in formation and the high
priest is up ahead of these things and they’ve got carts and everything else
where they’ve moved in for the conference, and they have messengers running
back and forth from the high priest.
Samuel is passive to this thing, Samuel is just waiting to see what goes
on because he’s not the high priest, he’s just sitting there. And they have
these messengers running back and forth to do this, and finally they find out,
well we got down here, now what do we do.
And so this messenger comes trotting up to the high priest, and so they
inquire of the Lord, now what’s the deal, we’ve got into the family of Kish,
there’s nobody there.
Verse 22, “Therefore, they inquired of the LORD further, if the man
should yet come thither [there],” and the question they’re asking in verse 22
is has he shown up yet, has he come to the meeting, is the man delayed some
place. “And the LORD answered, Behold,
he has hidden himself among the luggage [baggage],” and this is a very humorous
statement in the Hebrew because of the way it’s constructed. The Lord says oh yeah, take a good look, he’s
hiding under the luggage. Now to get the
irony of this particular statement you have to go back to a little phrase back
in verse 19, because in verse 19 where it says, “you have this day rejected
your God,” now in the King James it says “who himself saved you,” that’s not
what the Hebrew says, in the Hebrew it is “who is your Savior.” That’s a pretty powerful statement. God is claiming through the mouth of Samuel
in verse 19 that I am the Savior of this nation. You have despised Me and you have said that I
am not worthy to deliver you from the Philistines. You’ve got to keep the political situation in
mind, the Philistine oppression. And you
don’t count me worthy to deliver you from these Philistines. I have done all of this before and I have
proven over and over again My faithfulness to you and you don’t trust Me to do
this. All right, you want a king, take a
good look at what kind of a king you’ve got; he’s hiding under the
suitcases. What a glorious way for a
king to enter his kingdom, out from a pile of junk. This is how Saul makes his grand entrance.
Now this is the way God is narrating this through the Holy Spirit and He
intends it be funny. Now actually it
happened, this is not a distortion of the historical incident, but the Holy
Spirit narrates this with humor because it’s God’s humorous sarcasm at
believer’s stupidity. And if you want to
apply this personally, God, because He’s immutable and the same yesterday,
today and forever, He has this same humorous attitude to some of the goofy
things you do. And if you’ve ever
thought of God laughing at you, in humor, if you haven’t thought that it might
do you some spiritual good to think about God that way; He’s not an old meany
and He’s not some ogre that’s sitting on the throne ready to strike you with
lightening. And the Scripture here shows
you very clearly that He has a sense of humor.
And isn’t this to be expected. If
the Bible is correct, going back to Genesis 1, and if we are made in God’s
image and part of the image of man is humor, why then should we be surprised if
God doesn’t have humor? Why should we
have something God doesn’t have when we’re made in His image? Of course God has a sense of humor; of course
He smiles, of course He laughs. Jesus
Christ probably did many times, He enjoyed Himself at the parties. He was a very popular figure to invite to
parties. So God does have a sense of
humor.
So He says if you want to see your king Israel, take a good look under
the junk as the King James very gloriously translates it “he hid himself among
the stuff.” Verse 23, “And they ran and
fetched him from there; and when he stood among the people, he was taller than
any of the people, from his shoulders and upward. [24] And Samuel said to all
the people, See ye him whom the LORD has chosen, that there is none like him
among all the people? And all the people
shouted, and said, God save the king.”
Literally, “let the king live.”
Now “let the king live” is an expression… all of this is filled with
irony, we haven’t got time to go into all this but if you just read this you’ll
see irony packed in the whole thing because the narrator has very skillfully
put verse 22 very close to verse 24, he didn’t have to do that. He could have narrated all sorts of things
that happened between them but by deliberately putting verse 24 right next to
verse 22 what’s he saying. Samuel comes
out and says boy, did you ever see a guy like this, and the irony is sure, look
where he just came from, the junk heap; is there another guy like this around,
maybe we can have him for king too.
So this is Saul, the people’s choice to replace God. And when they say “God save the king” or “Let
the king live,” which down through history, which remember in particular in the
European monarchies this was a famous saying that was given to the crown, “God
save the king.” This is where it came
from; it’s these passages from 1 Samuel where most of the customs of European
royalty originally came from. “Let the
king live,” means let him function effectively in history. It’s not talking about let the king live a
long life. The Hebrew word for “life”
means a lot more than that, let him live, you might say, and live abundantly,
let him do things.
Verse 25, “Then Samuel told the people the manner of the kingdom,” and
here Samuel is again briefing the people,
“and wrote it in a book,” now this is not Deuteronomy 17:14 and
following, I went through that passage with you; that is already laid up before
the Lord. Samuel adds to the Scripture here, and by the way, this is the sign
of what a real living prophet is to do.
If we had real living prophets today we will have them writing canonical
Scripture. That’s the corollary to the
presence of living prophets. And if we
really had a gift of prophecy and if we really had a gift of tongues we would
have to conclude that the canon of Scripture is still open because there would
still be a functioning prophetic line and we should still expect infallible
inerrant Scripture. I don’t know about
you but I haven’t heard of too many chapters being added to the book of
Revelation.
Samuel is not a phony, he is a real one and he writes it in a book, and
apparently this is the source of 1 Samuel 8; this scroll that was laid up was
kept in the ark and apparently, we can’t be dogmatic, apparently this was 1
Samuel 8, this great political speech, and it was recorded for posterity in the
ark. Verse 25, “And Samuel told the
people the manner of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book, and laid it up before
the LORD. And Samuel sent all the people
away, every man to his house.” [26] And
Saul also went home to Gibeah; and there went with him a band of men, whose
hearts God had touched.” And this is the
nucleus and these men whose hearts God had touched, in verse 26, will form his
staff. These are military men, the
“band” are warriors, and these are his chiefs of staff who will later be used
to run the army.
Now Israel does not have a draft system, they had a very fine army at
this time in history because of the way the Mosaic Law was designed. The first thing that they did is that they
would issue a call, that you’ll see in the next chapter, to a national calamity
and they would gather all the eligible males, and then according to the book of
Deuteronomy the priests would go through and he’d check them out, and any of
the cowards and the yellow-bellies and all the rest of them, would be
dismissed. And they would keep on
dismissing them and getting rid of them, the gripers and complainers and
everybody else until they got down to a core of men that meant business. And when they got down to that if they only
had two people, they would have had two people, but they won the battle with
them. So these are the men who will lead
that army, verse 26, they’re going to stay with Saul because even though the
privates are going to be recruited later on the chiefs of staff must constantly
be in touch with the king.
Verse 27, this is a little note and it’s tacked on like all these other
things. You can’t prove that verse 27 is
citing a fault in Saul’s character yet, but in retrospection, after we see what
eventually happens to Saul, we being to read back verses like verse 27 and here
we see one of his faults. “But the
children of Belial [certain worthless fellows] said,” this is just a Hebrew
idiom for fools, “How shall this man save us?
And they despised him, and brought him no presents.” The significance of not bringing the king
presents is tantamount to rebellion.
It’s not an innocent thing, not to bring the king presents. In an Oriental court not to bring the king a
present would be I reject your authority.
So notice what Saul does to someone who rejects his authority. “But he held his peace,” and it’s a Hebrew
participle which means he continually held his peace. And so here again we see one of those fatal
things that –R learned behavior pattern that that Kish family, a very open
respectable business family in the nation, a family that had everything going
for it, that had wealth, that had culture, that had education, that had genius,
that had character, that had physical attractiveness and strength, all of those
things going for it, there was a flaw in that family character and here it
popped out again with Saul.
What is the flaw? The best way of
summarizing the flaw in the Kish family is that they despised spiritual
things. They always placed something
non-spiritual over that which is spiritual.
They are filled with human good.
This is what makes them so attractive to the average person. Most people would read of a man like Saul and
they’d say this man is fantastic, he’s popular, he’s polite, he’s courteous,
he’s well-bred, he’s a leader, he’d be in everybody’s book on who was most
likely to succeed. This is Saul, who has
all the attributes that would be respected in the average community. So the Kish family has always emphasized
human good; they’re obsessed with what is polite, what is courteous. Nothing wrong with that but they always put
that in place of commitment to Jehovah.
Now what is the significance of this last little note in verse 27 in
light of the Kish family character? By
despising Saul who was it that these men were really despising? They were despising God who chose Saul, were
they not. Haven’t we had by now two
evidences that God has chosen Saul king.
And if they despise and say will this man rule over us, what are they
doing? They’re despising and rejecting
the Word of God. So whose authority are
they basically rejecting? God’s
authority. But notice what Saul
does? He takes it personally and he has
this human good, why I’m a nice guy, I won’t lower the boom on these guys, I’ll
allow them to violate the authority of my office. What is that?
He despises the office. This is
usually impressed upon young officers in the service; when you get your
commission the first thing, or one of the things you’re told either before the
commissioning or after the commissioning is that when you walk around with the
bars on your shoulders and you have somebody come up to you and call you a
damned fool you can go ahead and let them call you a damned fool but don’t you
ever let them call you a damned Lieutenant.
Knock their block off, don’t you ever let anybody get away with that
because that is despising your office.
They can reject you personally but when they see the bars they respect
the office or they get canned. And
that’s the way the authority has to be.
Now this is what, as an officer, Saul is not respecting. He is not respecting his office, and
therefore he does not respect his God.
These people don’t respect God and Saul lets them get away with it. He should have killed them right here. This is a capital offense, and Saul should
have administered capital punishment right on the spot, but he didn’t; he let
it go. You’ll see the results in his
life later on.
All right, chapter 11:1-11 is the second section of this development of
the historical confirmation of Saul.
We’ve seen in 10:17-27 the public identification of Saul. Now 11:1-11 the military victory of
Saul. Now there’s a principle in chapter
11 that we will use again to refer to our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. 11:1-11 shows us that in the Old Testament
whenever God was at work there had to be some physical evidence of deliverance,
something that you could measure, something you could see with your eyes,
something you could get your hands on, and if Saul would not have been
victorious he would not have been accepted as king in spite of what had already
happened. So he has got to have a
military victory because the king’s job is to deliver and deliverance in spite
of the modern diplomacy, deliverance politically only come by military victory. They understood the principle that freedom
comes only with military victory.
“Then Nahash, the Ammonite, came up, and encamped against Jabesh-gilead;
and all the men of Jabesh said unto Nahash, Make a covenant with us, and we
will serve thee.” The situation looks
like this, Ammon is over here, and by the way, even to this day if you look on
a modern map we have the survival of this because what is the capital of
Jordan, Amman, and Amman is just a continuation of Ammon and the modern day
Jordanians are part Ammonites. They are
geologically related to the same group of people. The Ammonites start coming across the Jordan
River.
The Jordanian foreign policy is always to secure a beachhead on the west
side of Jordan; the Ammonites have always tried to secure a beachhead on the
west side of Jordan; this is what the people in the United Nations and people
in our state department have never figured out, why is Israel so hostile to
Jordan, Jordan is our friend, Jordan is the most pro-western republic in the
Middle East and those bigoted Jews have all the west bank of Jordan and they
won’t let King Hussein and his Arabs have it.
Granted, King Hussein and the Jordanians are a group as far as Arabs go
a fairly good, decent group of people and they are people who have done a lot
compared to the other Arabs, and they have been generally pro-western. But the reason Israel is not going to
voluntarily let them have the western side of the Jordan is right here
historically. They know that Ammon
always wants the west side of Jordan and God doesn’t want them to have it; it’s
a historical argument and you can’t understand it if you don’t have a
background in the Old Testament. So who
has a background in the Old Testament?
Nobody, so nobody understands the historical situation with King
Hussein. All you have to do is read Old
Testament history and you can understand that Hussein’s offer to take the west
side will always be rejected, by arm force.
The Jews will never permit him to do this once they’ve got it.
Well Ammon tried it here, except there was a beachhead called
Jabesh-gilead right here, which is a launching pad to take this west side of
Jordan. It was traditionally a place,
it’s on a little higher ground, and by moving the armies up there, capturing
this point, they have an infiltration point across the Jordan and it was a key
military point and this is what Nahash, the Ammonite, is trying to do in verse
1. Now verse 1 is also a very wonderful
reminder to us all of God’s sovereignty because Saul needed a fight to prove himself
and there’s always a sucker that happens to be floating around on negative
volition that God can use under Satan’s leading and so on to start the
fight. Notice Israel doesn’t start the
fight, the Gentiles start the fight.
Analogous to you as a believer, if you start living your life on
positive volition, you start applying divine viewpoint in every area of your
life Satan is going to attack you; you don’t have to go looking for a fight,
you’ll get it, handed to you fast. And
every time you have this kind of a thing treat it like this; it’s an
opportunity to clobber them, that’s all.
Verse 2, “And Nahash, the Ammonite, answered them, On this condition
will I make a covenant with you, that I may thrust out all your right eyes, and
lay it for a reproach upon all Israel,” see he offers a covenant, but it’s a
different kind of covenant than they wanted.
In verse 1 they offered to reject Yahweh’s covenant, make their own with
Nahash, which would be a covenant with Satan, and Nahash says no, when you make
a covenant with me I’m going to thrust out all your right eyes. Now we know from the Ugaritic materials that
this is not just a random notice in the book of 1 Samuel. The Ugaritic materials show that this was a custom
of the time; it was the always attended humiliating treaty and they would make
a treaty and they’d take all the male soldiers and they’d punch one eye out on
every boy. And this would render them
with no depth perception and once they had no depth perception this meant that
they would be out as far as warriors were concerned. It was a way of disarming a group of
people.
Verse 3, “And the elders of Jabesh said unto him, Give us seven days’
respite, that we may send messengers unto all the borders of Israel; and then,
if there be no man to save us, we will come out to thee.” And so the messengers come to Saul, verse 4,
“Then came the messengers to Gibeah of Saul, and told the tidings in the
hearing of the people; and all the people lifted up their voices, and wept. [5]
And, behold, Saul came after the herd out of the field; and Saul said, What
ails the people that they weep? And they
told him the tidings of the men of Jabesh.”
And then Saul does something very interesting when this happens. In verse 6, “And the Spirit of God came upon
Saul when he heard those tidings, and his anger was kindled greatly” now this
is a verse that is interpretive; nobody was there to see the Spirit come down
on Saul. This is an interpretation of
the author of the history that the Holy Spirit came down on Saul. Now I’m emphasizing that because I want you
to see two things about God’s Word. You
have an interpretation about something in the spiritual realm that you cannot
see; unseen. Nobody saw the Holy Spirit
come on Saul. That is an interpretation,
that has something to do with the unseen world.
Now what authority did the writer of this passage have for saying the
Spirit came on Saul. It wasn’t because
he was angry, because in verse 6 his anger is an entirely different clause;
that is separated from the coming of the Spirit and Saul. So what is it that allows the author to
conclude the Holy Spirit came on Saul.
This is not a theoretical question because this question you should be
asking yourself, how do you know when the Holy Spirit is guiding you; how do
you know when the Holy Spirit has done a work in your life. Can you go out and
say the Holy Spirit did this in my life?
Yes you can, if you know how to say it.
Or has this been an empty phrase, oh the Spirit blessed; how did he
bless, oh, He just blessed, I don’t know.
This is the way many believers speak and it’s a very unbiblical way and
I want to show you that’s not the way the authors of the Scripture spoke. When
they said “the Spirit of God came upon Saul,” there’s going to be some reasons
given in the text, in the context. And
when we see those reasons then we can say yes, verse 6 is justified.
In verse 7, “And he took a yoke of oxen, and hewed them in pieces, and
sent them throughout all the coast [borders] of Israel by the hands of
messengers, saying, Whosoever comes not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so
shall it be done unto his oxen. And the
fear of the LORD fell on the people, and they came out with one consent.” this
is a very similar thing if you remember in Judges 19, when the concubine had
been raped to death on the steps of this man’s door and so he went out in the
morning and she was dead, so he took his little knife and cut her body up into
twelve pieces and shipped a piece off to each tribe. This is the same kind of thing here, they’ve
taken an oxen and cut him up into twelve pieces and shipped a piece off to each
tribe. Now this is not something to
promote through the mail service but it is a way of alerting the nation that
they are to come to battle. And this is
the way the people were called. This is
a threat. Now get this, those of you who
despise patriotism. What this is saying
is if you don’t answer the call to come, this is going to happen to you. That is the nature of this call. It’s not Uncle Sam wants you; it’s rather you
will appear and if you don’t Uncle Sam will get you. So this is a more forceful point of
summoning…
[tape turns, anything said about verses 8-11 is missing: “And when he
numbered them in Bezek, the children of Israel were three hundred thousand, and
the men of Judah thirty thousand. [9] And they said unto the messengers who
came, Thus shall ye say unto the men of Jabesh-gilead, Tomorrow, by the time
the sun is hot, ye shall have help. And
the messengers came and told it to the men of Jabesh; and they were glad. [10]
Therefore the men of Jabesh said, Tomorrow we will come out unto you, and ye
shall do with us all that seems good unto you. [11] And it was so on the next
day, that Saul put the people in three companies; and they came into the midst
of the hose in the morning watch, and slew the Ammonites until the heat of the
day. And it came to pass, that they who
remained were scattered, so that two of them were not left together.” ]
The final third of the historical confirmation, we’ve seen in 10:17-27
the public identification; we’ve seen the military victory, and now we see the
coronation. Let’s look at this
coronation. Let’s look at this
coronation. “And the people said unto
Samuel, Who is he that said, Shall Saul reign over us? Bring the men, that we may put them to death.” Now verse 12 reflects back on the same group
that 10:27 did. Again watch this construction in the Hebrew. You have a consistent narrative, it stops,
you have a gap, and then 11:12 picks up the narrative again. What is the reason for those 11 verses being
in the middle? To show you the empirical
evidence that Paul truly, beyond the shadow of a doubt, had the authority of
the office, and now the crime of those mentioned in verse 27 becomes all the
more black. And surely by this point all
the people understand the nature of the crime; all the people understand that
this is a crime of the rejection of Jehovah God over the king. They all understand this, except one, the guy
who got found in the baggage heap.
Because in verse 13, “Saul said, There shall not be a man put to death
this day; for today the LORD has wrought salvation in Israel.”
Now this is another development of a kink in Saul’s character and this
should warn some of you who want to build doctrine out of the book of Acts, you
don’t build doctrine out of a history book, no matter how sweet saying appear
in that history book. Now here’s the
illustration, doesn’t that sound good, doesn’t Saul sound spiritual? Why, we’re not going to kill somebody today,
God has given us victory. That sounds
very sweet and pious, but if you will compare this verse with other verses,
particularly later on in the context where he has to get chewed out by Samuel,
Saul’s –R learned behavior pattern has intensified. Let’s watch it. Before it had human good. That was the way it originally was, but now
that he’s gotten mixed up with the office of the king, and what’s happened to
his human good. What is human good in
the first place? Social etiquette,
trying to impress people by their standards.
And so now he’s in the office of king, who’s he got to impress. Samuel?
So watch what happens to the
human good.
Now he has religious good, now he has all the pious phraseology, and
you’ll notice this every time Saul is wrong in Scripture he never admits
it. Why the Lord wouldn’t want me to do
that, and that’s exactly the answer he later is going to give Samuel when
Samuel chews him out for not doing something, why is the Lord going to do
that? And he comes with this pious lingo
and now his human good that began with his father Kish has now been developed
because Saul is still on negative volition in this area of his life and he is
developing a pattern that is going to get him involved with demon possession;
that’s how far this thing is going to go in Saul’s life. It is going to be a most horrible death that
Saul is going to die because he has allowed this –R learned behavior pattern to
get completely out of hand in his life.
And notice how it all started so innocently with human good, pious
phrases and all the rest. And we’ll see
what happens eventually.
Verse 14, “Then said Samuel to the people, Come, and let us go to
Gilgal, and renew the kingdom there. [15] And all the people went to Gilgal,”
the significance of Gilgal, you recall, is the place where Israel came across
Jordan. It was the place for the
ratification of the covenant in Joshua.
Now there are three great historic events up to this point in the
political life of the nation: Sinai, Exodus 19; Joshua, several passages in
Joshua such as Joshua 8 and other passages, Joshua 23, where the covenant is
renewed and here in 1 Samuel 11 is the other great passage politically in the
Word of God; these three points. Sinai,
the kingdom is first made, officially and legally; Joshua confirms the covenant
when they are in the land, and now under Samuel leadership the kingdom takes on
the monarchial form. These are the three great political events in the life of
the nation. Verse 15, “And all the
people went to Gilgal; and there they made Saul king before the LORD in
Gilgal,” there’s the coronation, “and there they sacrificed sacrifices of peace
offerings before the LORD, ant there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced
greatly.”
Now we’ve learned these things about the historical confirmation of the
office of King, which I said was the office of the Messiah, which is the office
that Jesus Christ holds. But wouldn’t
you suspect that there might be some parallels between what the New Testament
speaks of in Christ and His office, and in His coronation, and the order and
sequence that we see here. And sure
enough there is. Turn to Hebrews 1. In Hebrews 1 we have the three phases. What
are the three phases in Saul’s life? Now
don’t get confused, the other day I put Saul as in part a type of Satan and
here I’m writing Saul in comparison with Christ. The reason is that tonight we are dealing
with the office, not the person. So this
is the office, it’s a comparison of the office.
Saul is chosen by a prophet, the first thing, he’s anointed. The second thing is that he is publicly
chosen and thirdly he has a military victory and fourthly he is coronated.
Now Christ was chosen by John the Baptist; at that point the career and
office of Christ take two forms; a future form which is not yet, Christ has not
been publicly proclaimed as Messiah to the world by Israel. Christ has not had His major military victory
which He will in Revelation 19, and Christ has not been coronated based on
history visible to men. So all on that
side of Christ’s earthly life we have yet to experience, we will in the Second
Advent.
However, in the spiritual realm of the Church Jesus Christ is already
fulfilling these things. In Hebrews 1:3,
“Who, being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person,
and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself
purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. [4] Being
made so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more
excellent name than they. [5] For unto which of the angels said He at any time,
Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee.”
This refers to the coronation of Christ which was at His ascension. Jesus Christ has been coronated at the
Father’s right hand. What was the
victory that Jesus Christ [word/s missing] through that cross judgment, and
therefore He obtained complete victory over the powers of Satan and they are
defeated foes from this point on in history.
Jesus Christ was publicly proclaimed by those of positive volition, the
remnant publicly declared Christ as Messiah, just as during the Church Age
every time we receive Christ, every time someone is born again we have a public
proclamation. But during Christ’s
earthly ministry we had public proclamation by the remnant, we had a victory at
the cross and we had His coronation. And
notice too, that He could not be coronated, He could not have been coronated
until, like Saul, He proved Himself.
Notice that. Christ did not sit automatically at the Father’s right hand. He couldn’t sit there until He had proved
Himself, and what was it that Christ did to prove Himself worthy? He died on the cross, and led a perfect life. That is the historical evidence. This is why you’ve got four Gospels in your
Bible; those four Gospels are to give you the historical evidences that Christ
is worthy.
Now the other half of Christ’s ministry is yet to come. Turn to 1 Corinthians 15:24, “Then cometh the
end,” now this is talking about the final coronation of Christ in history, we
talked about the coronation at the Father’s right hand, this is the coronation
in the millennial kingdom. “Then comes
the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father,
when He has put down all rule and all authority and all power. [25] For He must
reign until He has put all enemies under His feet. [26] The last enemy that
shall be destroyed is death,” now that refers to the total complete and final
military victory of Jesus Christ over Satan.
This is why the Bible has what appears at first glance, and I know it
appears this way, the only thing I can tell you about it is you’ve got to think
it through until you see that it isn’t as gruesome as it appears. This why the Bible insists over and over
there is no justification for freedom apart from a victory involving putting
down by force the forces of evil. The
very archetype of all freedom comes because Christ forcibly puts Satan
down. Now the liberal has never
understood this because the liberal can never understand what Christ did on the
cross. To the liberal, to the liberal
clergymen, will talk about Jesus the Master, Jesus the Lord, Jesus this, Jesus
that, Jesus did good and Jesus did miracles, if you redefine them properly so
we don’t allow supernaturalism into the system.
Jesus did all these things. But
nowhere in the list of what Jesus does is a forcible putting down of rebellious
elements of evil. Nowhere; it’s never
there.
And therefore the liberal is always under the delusion that you can
produce real freedom and real happiness without victory involving a military
type dimension, as Christ did on the cross, as Christians are now doing in the
spiritual realm. There is no freedom for
you as a believer functioning right now unless you actively struggle and become
victorious over satanic attacks. If you
ran your Christian life like the United States is running its foreign policy
you’d never make it, and maybe that’s why some of you haven’t made it. You never win in the Christian life by
sitting down and having a conference with Satan; now Satan you take that and
I’ll take this and then we’ll have an election.
You can just imagine how far this would get you in the Christian
life. Is that how you handle the forces
of Satan.
Let’s conclude by turning to Ephesians 6. The only way of freedom, the only way Jesus
Christ, our King, gives us freedom is by military victory and this is carried
over into the historical political arena as it is, primarily, in the spiritual
arena. Notice verse 11, “Put on the
whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the
devil.” Take on the whole armor of God,
and then finally, notice, verse 17, “And take the helmet of salvation, and the
sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.”
Where do you read in verse 11, show me anywhere between verses 11 and 17
where there’s a spirit of compromise, where you sit down and make a treaty, you
sit down and Satan, if you’ll stay behind that bar I won’t bother you; where do
you see that in the Word of God. You
see, it’s a mentality that is utterly foreign.
This is why I have tried to make these analogies between the office of
Christ and the king because I hope that as we study the Old Testament together
and as we see these incidents, which I know some of you have been in Sunday
School and other places where you think of these as little Sunday School
stories. I want to tie this together
because there’s a certain mentality that you have to capture that is against
everything, even that which is called “good” in our society. And the study of Saul is a perfect one for
you, living as you are, in the present American culture because Saul is the
American [can’t understand word] at this point.
He is the most beautiful picture of the prevailing American attitude
because he’s everything that (quote) “the American respects.” He’s attractive, he’d be on the first page of
Lite Bright Toothpaste or whatever it is, he’d make every advertisement, he’d
fit every category that Americans love because he always has all these
attractiveness’s and he doesn’t get excited about spiritual absolutes, he
doesn’t get that bigotry element in him, his character is all clear of
that. Saul’s a fine American; there’s
only one problem: as I read Scripture God says that that kind of a person and
Americans like him are in serious trouble because they never appreciate the
mentality of spiritual warfare in Scripture.
With our heads bowed.