1 Samuel Lesson 13
First Occurrence of Lawsuit Form Against the
Nation – 1 Samuel 12
Before we begin the next chapter I’d like to take a few minutes to
answer some of the questions that have been handed. One question: Just because Saul won the battle
does this by itself substantiate or give reason for 11:6 to be written, i.e.
for the author to say the Spirit of God came upon Saul. Turn to 1 Samuel 11:6, the point was made
last week that a verse like verse 6 is interpretative, that is, the author
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, stated something about Saul that
could not be directly observed in that the Holy Spirit didn’t come upon Saul
like the Holy Spirit came, say on Jesus at the Jordan. So therefore, how could verse 6 be said, that
“the Spirit of God came upon Saul when he heard those tidings?” The reason that this could be said was
because adequate empirical evidences existed that the Holy Spirit worked in his
life. This is why the rest of the
chapter is devoted to the winning of the battle.
The answer is: yes he could, simply because if you read the book of
Judges, this becomes a norm and standard for what we call the Yahwehistic
historians to say that the Holy Spirit is there working; they measure the Holy
Spirit’s presence by certain pet themes, and one of the pet themes is victory
in battle. And you can argue, well I
don’t see how that by itself proves the presence of the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t by itself, but placed in the flow
of the Old Testament theology it most certainly does. And if you don’t grab the argument it’s
because you do not yet understand the theme of Judges and the theme of 1 Samuel
and the only way I can show you would be for me to go through verse by verse,
what I’m doing, and to point out where this occurs again and again and
again. So if you do have trouble with
seeing why military victory is a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit, it’s
probably because you have an inadequate understanding of the book of Judges and
the book of Samuel, but you’re just going to have to accept the fact until you
do this for yourself, that this is the way the historian looks at the scene,
that he tests whether the incumbent of any office, such as Saul, is successful
in doing the job of the office. After
all, what is the job of the office?
Isn’t it military victory, how else do we gain freedom but by military
victory.
Now granted, some people have trouble with military victory today
because we live in a generation where the words “military victory” is just a
priss word or something and we have to shuffle our feet and apologize for using
the term, but back in Biblical times when people were straighter in their
perception on the function of government this was not such a difficult concept
to understand.
Then another question: If John
the Baptist was a true prophet, why did he not add to the Scripture as Samuel
did with 1 Samuel 8. And the answer is
that John the Baptist did add to Scripture; what do you think Matthew 3 is
about. He didn’t write it but it was
written about him, so John the Baptist most certainly did add to
Scripture. So if we have living prophets
we have additions to Scripture which gets to the third question, actually a
third and fourth question, which has amassed about 1500 times since I’ve come
here, and this must be the 1501st time and that has to deal with
your idea of tongues and prophecy. All I
can say is that I have answered this on several tape series but it seems like
every once in a while someone trots in that hasn’t heard yet. So we’ll go through it for the 1501st
time. When you were speaking about gift
of tongues and prophecy in 1 Samuel 10, did you mean to say there is no valid
Biblical gift of tongues; please explain.
And then another card: in your teaching in the past you have discouraged
the use of tongues mildly as a spiritual gift, or for the use of tongues as a
means of prophecy. Why such
discouragement when it is encouraged in 1 Corinthians 14 and other passages?
Well obviously when you heard my previous teachings in which I “mildly
discouraged” the gift of tongues you didn’t quite hear it all. So let’s go through and explain why we do not
go [can’t understand word]. Let me first
say that I am not going to give a complete answer and if you want a complete
answer there is available in the tract rack a very excellent tract written by a
very close friend of mine, George Meisinger, who teaches in Minneapolis,
Minnesota and his specialty, for years, since I’ve known George in seminary
days he is one of the most thorough students I know of on spiritual gifts, and
he’s written a very fine pamphlet. And
you’ll find a complete treatment of the argument in that pamphlet. The Doctrine of Spiritual Gifts by George
Meisinger. Another book that develops
it, though it doesn’t contain all the arguments that George has in his pamphlet
is Merrill Unger, The New Testament
Teaching on Tongues, and that is another very excellent treatment. So if you don’t like what I say and you don’t
understand what I say I’m giving you the references. Now either you’re here to cause trouble by
stirring up the congregation with your question or you’re here for information
and if you’re here for information then I recommend the sources that I have
quoted. We have other things written,
another one I’d recommend is Dr. Charles Ryrie’s book, The Holy Spirit, and in particular the chapter on spiritual gifts
in that book. There’s a lot of study
available to you if you’re really sincere on finding out, that is where you
should go to find out.
The outline of the argument is this: that tongues appear in two contexts
in the New Testament. In Acts 2 and in
other passages they appear as a sign gift to various critical groups, not all
believers. In Acts 2 it may be given to
just eleven men; there’s a doubt whether all 120 people ever spoke in tongues
in Acts 2. Then in Acts 8 you have some
people speaking in tongues, Acts 10 and Acts 19; all these are special
groups. Acts 8 are Samaritans; Acts 10
are Gentiles, and Acts 19 are John the Baptist’s disciples. So where you have odd groups entering the
church dispensation you have this tongues as a sign gift.
Then we have a second context in which tongues appear in the New
Testament, 1 Corinthians 14 and here they appear as a spiritual gift. But as a spiritual gift they are declared to
be a temporary gift in 1 Corinthians because in 1 Corinthians 13, which is in
the middle of the discussion, actually the discussion runs from chapters 12-14,
in verse 8-9 it says tongues are going to cease “when that which is perfect is
come.” What is “that which is
perfect?” It’s a neuter noun and refers
to the completed canon of Scripture, for reasons which George Meisinger
develops extensively in his pamphlet. So
1 Corinthians 13 prophesies the end of the gift of tongues. Why?
Because tongues was a sign gift, it was a sign gift to Jews; it was a
sign gift that fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah 28:11 and again the gift of
tongues is therefore not a sign of blessing; the gift of tongues is a sign of
cursing as Isaiah very clearly says. There’s no blessing ever associated in God’s
Word with tongues. It’s always a sign of
cursing, cursing upon the nation
Finally, there’s a third step in the argument and that is that tongues
today, the phenomenon that passes for tongues has a number of discrepancy. The first discrepancy is that no one in the
tongues movement has ever defined Scripturally the basis and purpose of
tongues. They have never been able to
reconcile Romans 6 and the baptism therein described with the baptism described
in 1 Corinthians 12-13; they inevitably have to make these two different kind
of baptisms or something. The modern
charismatic movement does one of two things with the tongues phenomenon, and
both are wrong. The first thing that
they can do is they equate it with the baptism of the Holy Spirit that follows
salvation. Now there is no baptism of
the Holy Spirit that follows salvation; you can’t get that out of the Word of
God. Every believer that has ever become a believer, from the time after
Pentecost, from the time that you believe in Jesus Christ, you have been
identified, which the word “baptize” means, you have been identified with the
Holy Spirit. There is no post-salvation baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Now you may have a type of emotional reaction or you may have various
exciting and interesting spiritual things that happen to you, but I’ve had
three or four of these things happen to me; am I going to go around and says
I’m baptized with the Holy Spirit four times.
That’d make a good testimony but I’m not going to do it because it would
be a lie. I could haul any number of you
up here who have had experiences but you don’t go around saying you were
baptized with the Holy Spirit just because you had a few experiences. I hope you have experiences with the Lord
every day. Don’t just pin all your hopes
on one. But quoting the factors in the
Holy Spirit with tongues as a post-salvation event has no Scriptural
basis.
So what most charismatic groups do is that they make a spiritual gift
out of it. And they say this is a
continuation of 1 Corinthians 14 and it’s not this, it’s not the baptism of the
Holy Spirit, it’s this. And then they
say well, I’ll tell you what, we don’t push tongues in our group, we just
believe in having private devotions by tongues, we pray to God in unknown
tongues while we’re having our private devotions. And they’ll cite something in 1 Corinthians
14. There’s only one problem with that;
that isn’t what 1 Corinthians 14 is talking about. 1 Corinthians isn’t talking about private
devotions, it’s talking about church service.
A spiritual gift is never to be used for your private devotions; a
spiritual gift if it is really a spiritual gift is given to edify the entire
body and that includes other believers.
So you’d better come up with a new excuse because having your spiritual
gift in the closet during your devotional life has nothing to do with the
doctrine of spiritual gifts. By
definition what is a spiritual gift? It
is something, a capacity given to part of the body of Christ to do what? To edify the other part of the body of
Christ. So by jabbering away in your
private devotions how is this supposed to edify the body of Christ when they’re
not even there to benefit from the gift.
So tongues is not given for private devotions either, and that is not
what 1 Corinthians 14 means and I again refer you to Meisinger ’s book.
So I see all the Biblical evidences against it and also could cite a
bunch of experiential reason too but I’m not going to, I want to stay with
Scripture as far as the basis of the argument.
But we could cite various things, the fact that when you test the tongue
it turns out to be satanic because it flunks the test of 1 John 4; we could
cite the fact that on the mission field everywhere tongues have gone for more
than five years it has resulted in a decline in missionary evangelism that has
resulted in the fragmentation of native churches, etc. So if you want to base the argument on
experience I can cite plenty of experience too.
And if you want a reference on experience I would recommend Kurt Koch’s
book, The Strife of Tongues written
by a German Lutheran evangelist who has traveled extensively throughout the
world and examined this from the experiential point of view. To chalk it up here, 1501, so next time will
be 1502.
Let’s turn to 1 Samuel 12. In 1
Samuel 12 we have a very important passage and one that is the summation of the
section we’ve been studying. We’ve been studying the section from
Beginning in 12:1-25 we have the historical confirmation of the office,
and here we again have historic evidences supplied by the author to prove that
God has indeed erected this office, and here we have the role of grace. And this is something that every once in a
while we have an outbreak of anti-grace people and I think it’s time we got
clear on grace and 1 Samuel 12 is a wonderful exposition of grace, why God does
not condone but that He does permit all sorts of gross things, particularly in
the fourth divine institution.
So let’s look at 1 Samuel 12 and look at the structure of this
chapter. To understand this chapter you
have to understand two kinds of literary form; the treaty form and the rib form. The treaty form is a form which is given by
God through Moses. And the idea is that
God Himself enters into a treaty with the twelve tribes. And the particular kind of treaty that he
uses is structured after the ancient Near Eastern treaty forms of that
generation. And these treaties have
various parts to them, I refer you to the Deuteronomy series where this is
developed in detail because the entire book of Deuteronomy is written in this
treaty form. But to sum up, the treaty
form is simply this: that the king, the great king, in this case God, the great
king ingratiates himself with a vassal king, in this case it is the twelve
tribes. And God is essentially arguing
in the treaty form that you twelve tribes to not deserve salvation, there’s
nothing that you have done by which you can merit My attention. You are sinners from top to bottom; you have
no claim on My righteousness. But I, I
have shown you grace after grace after grace after grace; grace piled on top of
grace in dealing with you in the middle of all your sin, in the middle of all
your rebellion I have stayed with you.
And therefore, since I have brought you to this point, now beginning at
this point I am placing responsibility on your shoulders. And the treaty spells out the form of
responsibilities. And so the book of
Deuteronomy, we convert that over and we say the Law; but the Law is basically
an exposition of the responsibilities of believers.
Now you remember that; the Law was never given as a means of salvation
in the Old Testament. Why? A very simple historic sequence of
events. Keep this straight in your mind,
you’ll never have a problem. Was the Law
given on Mount Sinai, given before or after the Exodus from Egypt? It was given after. Well if the Exodus represents salvation then
how could the Law have ever been given as a means of salvation? The means of salvation was the parting of the
Red Sea. That’s the means of salvation.
So the Law was never given for salvation, the Law was given as a means
of life. And so in the New Testament
when it says the Law is done away with it’s not doing what some Christians
think, and they say oh yeah, that means the Law has done away with the system
of salvation but we are still under the Law as far as Christian life. Oh no you’re not, the Law was done completely
away with. A Christian is not under the
Mosaic Law, as a way of life either, not only as a way of salvation because
Israel was never under it in the first place, as a way of salvation, but no New
Testament believer who knows what he’s doing is ever under any part of the
Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law has been
destroyed completely as far as the New Testament saint is concerned. Now that is the treaty form.
But the reeve form is something that follows upon the treaty form. This is pronounced like it was an rib, as in Victory, rib form and it means a lawsuit, that is the Hebrew word for
lawsuit. And beginning here in 1 Samuel
12 we have the first occurrence of this kind of rib form because Samuel was the first prophet who was administering
the lawsuit against the nation. From
this point forward, when we encounter prophets speaking, they will usually
address the nation in a rib
format. Now here are the parts to a rib format. They are outlined in detail in Deuteronomy
32, the national hymn, and this national hymn was structured along the lawsuit
form and the prophets borrowed from it.
But it basically consists of these parts: a call to witnesses, this is
most of the time included, not always. The second part is an introductory
summary of the case; the third part is a recital of the goodness of God, that’s
always there, introductory summary, recital.
In other words, there will be a recital that up to this point in history
if something has gone wrong it is not God’s fault, it is man’s fault. God has kept the terms of the treaty. Then there will follow an accusation in which
the nation will be accused of violating the treaty in some way, shape or form. And then finally there will be an
announcement of doom, an announcement of judgment.
And this is the role of a prophet; simply stated, the picture of an Old
Testament prophet is a man who was called into God’s presence, who receives
from God the authorization to conduct a lawsuit against the nation. And the lawsuit is conducted against the
treaty form of Deuteronomy. Every
prophet, from Isaiah to Jeremiah, all of them are doing the same thing. Those of you who have Bible courses, or have
read articles about the prophets, perhaps in liberal church materials and
you’ve gotten the image that the prophet was some sort of a social reformer,
that’s not true. The prophet of the Old
Testament was not a social reformer. The
prophet in the Old Testament was always a reactionary; he went backwards, not
forwards. He went back to the standards
of the Mosaic Law.
Now in 1 Samuel 12 we are going to divide the text along the form of a rib controversy. The first 12 verses have to do with an
introductory summary and the recital of the goodness of God. These are the historic evidences that God has
been faithful to the Law, that He has been faithful to His Word. In verses 13-19 we have the accusation made
against the nation, with evidences.
We’ll make that the whole thing, and the accusation and the announcement
of judgment combined in 13-19. And then
finally, 20-25 is Samuel’s final challenge to do something to the nation. So it’s three parts, the first 12 verses,
then verses 13-19, then verses 20-25.
Now let’s look at the first 12 verses.
“And Samuel said unto all Israel,” now where is he saying this, 11:15,
what are they doing? They’re meeting in
Gilgal and there they are installing Saul as king. Samuel in the midst of it gets up and he
makes this great speech. This is a
change of command ceremony. Now in the
military a change of command is when you have a new officer come to take the
command of an older officer and you usually have a parade and so on as this
change of command occurs. Now here you
have a change of command, a change in the command. And Saul is officially replacing Samuel as
the national leader at this point. And
chapter 12 is the speech that Samuel gives before he steps down from his
office. Therefore when he hands the
reigns of the government over to Saul he makes this lawsuit against the
nation. He does not do it peaceably; he
is, however, not vindictive. Samuel was
not a vindictive person who was mad because God has demoted him, he’s simply
going along with the program of God. And
by the way, Samuel goes along with the people in their sin at this point. It was wrong for them to have a king, and
Samuel goes along with them in it.
So from verses 1-12 Samuel steps down in deference to the sin of the
people and he says now I’m going to step down and I’m going to let you have
your sinful way, but as I do so, and I’m going to go along and I too am going
to respect the authority of this change, but as I step down I want to declare
the issue. I want you to understand that
God does not condone this but God is going to, for this moment in history, go
along with it. And God is going to
accommodate Himself to the spiritual weakness of the people. This is characteristic of the fourth divine
institution. From the very beginning the
fourth divine institution was an accommodation by God to sinful man and it
always will be.
Now in verse 1, “And Samuel said unto all Israel, Behold, I have
hearkened unto your voice in all that ye said unto me, and have made a king
over you.” Now from verse 1 down through
verse 5 Samuel defends Himself. And then
from verses 6-12 he defends God. So the
first five verses emphasize Samuel’s office, and then the rest of the verses
emphasize God. Now these first five
verses are important for this reason, that Samuel is bringing the nation into
court, and he is saying essentially, 1 Corinthians 10:13, “There has no testing
taken you but such as is common to man, but God is faithful who will not permit
you to be tested above that which you are able, but will with the test make a
way of escape that you may be able to bear it.”
And so no Christian will ever run into a situation where he has to use
some sort of a gimmick, but all the time Christians do, as a matter of fact,
use gimmicks. And many are the times God
goes along with the gimmick.
Now that doesn’t mean that the believer doesn’t suffer from this; the
nation is going to suffer from it but God certainly allows this to go on, it’s
under His permissive will and He doesn’t make an issue out of it after
this. This is the last time God makes an
issue out of this sin; never again is this sin mentioned in Scripture. There are sins of the individual kings
mentioned but the sin of electing a king is never mentioned again. Does that mean that God condones the monarchy? Or the structure that has been started? No, but it means that He has accommodated
Himself to the sinfulness of men. You
say doesn’t that introduce a logical contradiction within Christianity. It can’t; if you’re going to argue that this
introduces a logical contradiction then you’re going to also have, if you’re
going to be logical to your position, that God could not have forgiven anybody
until after Christ paid for all the sins on the cross. How did God forgive sins in the Old Testament? He had no legal basis to forgive sins in the
Old Testament. But He did. Now how could God forgive sins in the Old
Testament? How could God condone and
overlook all sorts of things without challenging His own character. Does that introduce a logical contradiction
in Christianity? Of course not, because
it is promissory, it looks to the cross, and as Paul explains in Romans 3,
eventually in the matter of history God did reconcile the difference.
So 1 Corinthians 10:13 tells us a truth that the nation Israel must be
faced with. So in the first five verses
Samuel is going to argue this way. He’s
going to say now look, don’t say you have to have a king because I was a bad
judge. You can’t argue that way, I was a
godly judge, and it was not because I was corrupt that you have forsaken this
economy to go over to this new economy of centralized government. Don’t blame me for it, I did my job as unto
the Lord and you can’t accuse me of causing you to go over. So this is part of the lawsuit. The lawsuit is to support the master plan of
God. The master plan of God once again
is that God is worthy to receive all creature praise. And Samuel is defending God’s character in
this situation against those who would blame God, God gave us this great
pressure, we just had to compromise. No,
you didn’t have to compromise. But they
did, but they didn’t have to
compromise, but they did compromise. But
Samuel wants the issue clear that they didn’t compromise because of the
pressure from Samuel.
So let’s look at verse 2, “And now, behold, the king is walking before
you,” in other words, Saul has taken his office, he is now installed, and from
this point forward he will be king and ever after this the king will be
accepted. “I am old and gray-headed,
and, behold, my sons are with you; and I have walked before your from my
childhood unto this day. [3] Behold, here I am; witness against me before the
LORD, and before His Christ,” the word “anointed” is Mashach, which means Christ, and this is the word that we get Jesus
so-called “last” name, which isn’t His last name, it’s His title. “Jesus, the Christ” it should be. So here in verse 3 Samuel accepts the
legitimacy of the office, it is part of the legal argument. This whole legal argument is structured on a
compromise with sin and the compromise with sin is that God has lowered Himself
to the demands of the people; the people want an office, God says have it; you
wanted it, here it is, and the office is installed. And so verse 3 argues for the Lord and his
anointed. “Whose ox have I taken? Or whose ass have I taken? Or whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed? Or of whose hand have I received any bribe to
blind mine eyes with it. And I will restore it to you.”
So he throws forth a challenge to the people, he says are there any
legal details, won’t you come forward today and let’s clear it up today. And no one took it because the answer they
gave, in verse 4, “And they said, You have not defrauded us, nor oppressed us,
neither have you taken anything of any man’s hand.” And so in verse 4 the people, as it were
condemned themselves. Verse 4 is an
utter condemnation by the people of the people in which they say that it is not
your fault, Samuel, it is ours, because it wasn’t that you defrauded anyone; it
is rather that we just didn’t want it.
So here in the middle of a lawsuit proceeding, here in the middle of a
highly charged legal encounter we have Samuel bringing from the people their
own conviction for sin.
Why is this necessary for Samuel to do this. Because it must be made clear on the pages of
God’s Word that the prophet Samuel himself did not compromise when he
compromised. Now let’s watch this. [few
words missing] social standard so the leader goes for the sub-Christian social
standard. And this is the story of
living in a fallen world. Now we don’t
live in the millennium; that’s what the millennium means. This isn’t necessary to do then in the
millennium, but here in our church, in case you haven’t discovered, we are
premill, not amill, and that means we do not live in the millennium now and
that means when you are involved in the fourth divine institution you get your
hands dirty because the whole institution is dirty and it’s a necessary adjunct
of not living in the millennium. So
Samuel compromises but in doing this he is showing that before God personally
did not compromise.
He went with the people but it did not involve a compromise on his part,
and so he says in verse 5, “And he said unto the, the LORD is witness against
you, and his anointed is witness this day, that you have not found anything in
my hand. And they answered, They are
witness,” not “He is witness,” “They are witness. So this is a final clearing of Samuel, even
though Samuel has compromised with the people’s will, it is all right as far as
God is concerned. This is what we mean
when you are a leader of the fourth divine institution and you operate on a
sub-Biblical standard. Samuel was operating on a sub-Biblical standard. What’s the blame ultimately; the blame
ultimately is the people, not the leader.
Now in verse 6 he turns and develops his major theme and that is the
Lord is also not to be blamed for this.
There are only three possibilities for blaming people for this
situation; either the people are wrong, the leaders are wrong or God is wrong. And so it’s a very cleverly constructed
transcript here. He first eliminates
himself, he isn’t the one that compromised; now he eliminates God, God isn’t
the one that compromised. Well, then
who’s the one that compromised. He never
gets to it but it’s quite obvious who did.
Verse 6, “And Samuel said unto the people, It is the LORD who advanced
Moses and Aaron, and who brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt. [7]
Now, therefore, stand still, that I may reason with you before the LORD of all
the righteous acts of the LORD, which he did to you and to your fathers. [8]
When Jacob was come into Egypt, and your fathers cried unto the LORD, then the
LORD sent Moses and Aaron, who brought forth your fathers out of Egypt, and
made them dwell in this place. [9] And
when they forgot the LORD their God, he sold them into the hand of Sisera,
captain of the house of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, and into
the hand of the king of Moab, and they fought against them. [10] And they cried unto the LORD, and said,
We have sinned, because we have forsaken the LORD, and have served Baalim and
Ashtaroth; but now deliver us out of the hand of our enemies, and we will serve
thee. [11] And the LORD sent Jerubbaal, and Bedan, and Jephthah, and Samuel,
and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and ye dwelled
safely. [12] And when ye saw that Nahash, the king of the children of Ammon,
came against you, ye said unto me, Nay, but a king shall reign over us; when
the LORD your God was your king”
And that his exposition of God’s defense. Now let’s see the parts of that
exposition. First in verse 6 he goes
back to the historic redemption of the nation and starts with the act of
salvation. This is analogous to a
situation that may crop up in your life as a Christian. If there was a Samuel there he would go back
to the day you became a Christian and he would say the day you became a
Christian what did God do for you. He
did many wonderful things for you. The
first hour that you were born again you had all the assets you have today. You haven’t picked up any assets since the
time you were saved. You have all the
things that the Father does, all the things the Son does, all the things the
Holy Spirit does, that is part of your position and it has never changed. God has given you every asset you’ve ever
need. He didn’t intend for you to go
around seeking extra charges at various hand-holding ceremonies; you didn’t
need to do that because God had given this to you at the point of being born
again. So therefore Samuel would argue,
if he was applying the same logic to us today, you Christians, you’re down
here, you’re on negative volition, you’re in trouble, you’re in a mess, don’t
blame God, He provided for every situation far in advance.
So he says God advanced Moses and Aaron, ye tin the Hebrew it doesn’t
say advance, in the Hebrew it’s the common noun to make, asah, and this is one of the things that is a mystery about this
text, and commentators have scratched their head for years and years and years,
strange use of the word “make.” This is
usually used of the word “create.” And
you usually would tend to think that asah
would mean that the Lord made Moses and Aaron in the sense He directly created
them, but that can’t be because it doesn’t fit the context. So how
does asah work into this
thing. Apparently asah here means that God raised up their ministry. This refers to the work that God used in
Moses and Aaron’s life to raise them up.
It means again that God in grace used sinful agents to accomplish His
holy purposes. And so he advances Moses
and Aaron and they “brought up your fathers out of the land of Egypt.
Now in verse 7 he says I want you to stand still; the word “stand still”
is a notification that something important is going to follow. In other words, “get this, that I may reason
with you before the LORD,” the word “reason” means argue with an attorney, it
means to argue in a court of law. This
is not just sitting there reasoning together.
This is a powerful technical word that means let me bring you into court
and declare the case, “that I may declare with you before the LORD, all the
righteous acts of the LORD which He did to you and to your fathers.” So there will never be any doubt but that
these believers were blessed. So it’s a
defense of the blessing of God.
In understand the mentality of Samuel because every time you work with a
counseling situation somewhere along the line you find yourself cast in the
role of Samuel because inevitably some believer will come up and say oh, what a
horrible time I’m having. You’ve
gathered that or they wouldn’t be there.
But then they begin to say God’s giving me a hard time, or they imply
that God is giving them a hard time. Now
why is God giving them a hard time?
Because God loves to? NO, God
isn’t giving any believer a hard time because He likes to, so if some believer
is getting a problem it isn’t because God has chickened out on the promises
that God has made to you. God’s Word
stands true today regardless of whether you have believed it or not it’s still
there.
He goes on verse 8, “When Jacob was come into Egypt, and your fathers
cried,” and what happened, He made them [can’t understand word] through the
Exodus. Verse 9, “when they forgot the
LORD,” this is the period of the early judges, He “sold them into the hand of
Sisera … and into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand of the king of
Moab, and they fought against them.” So
there you have discipline but even the discipline is under the sovereign loving
hand of God. That would be analogous to
Samuel arguing with one of you tonight, those hard times you’ve had in the
Christian life, God sold you into the principalities and powers of darkness for
a working over until you would wake up and turn and repent or go back on positive
volition.
Verse 10, “And they cried unto the LORD, and said, We have sinned,”
there is the confession, and Samuel wants to make it clear that every point the
nation has confessed, at those points God has always forgiven. In other words, he wants to knock out the
idea, well gee, we tried and God didn’t answer our prayer. Oh no, he said every time you confessed your
sin, EVERY time you confessed your sin God was faithful, so don’t blame God on
this count either. In particular, as he
connects verse 9 and 10 he uses a technical word that occurs for the second
time in the Hebrew Bible here in this context, and that is that little word
that you see, “sold.” The verb to sell
in verse 9; that is a technical word that has to do with the rib controversy, the word “sell.”
This is the second time it occurs, the first time it occurs is in
Deuteronomy 32, so turn back to Deuteronomy 32.
In Deuteronomy 32:19-29 is the judgment section, this is what God is
going to do to them. But after the
judgment section in verse 29 there’s a very tender addition and this is
something that hit me when I was studying Hebrew like a ton of bricks because
when we used to compare, in seminary we would compare these kind of passages
with the other kinds of literature written in the ancient Near East, written in
Assyrian and so on, and there’d be different law treaty forms, and they’d all
parallel the Bible up until verse 30. In
other words it’d be almost a perfect parallel, this was the standard rib controversy that was used in the
ancient courts over and over again, but strange thing was, that no matter what
country that you studied as far as a lawsuit went, it always stopped at the
equivalent point of verse 29.
And beginning at verse 30 and following we have in the Bible the grace
addendum, where God appends grace onto the end of these treaty formats and by
this shows that though He sues the nation, though He hauls them into court on a
legal basis, ultimately even though He calls the people in on a legal basis,
underneath the legal basis He’s still a God of grace. And this is the amazing thing of grace. He brings the nation in officially by means
of a lawsuit but then, though He legally could have severed His relationship as
the great suzerain over the vassals, at this point, they had broken the treaty,
there was no legal recourse left for the nation, God says don’t worry, I still
love you, you are still My elect, and even though I am suing you and I am
accusing you of a crime against Me as treason, I will still be your God and
your King.
So beginning in verse 30 we have an explanation and here the mood
shifts, and here it shifts from one of high legality over to the softening
language of grace. “How should one chase
a thousand, and to put ten thousand to flight, except the Rock that sold them,
and the LORD shut them up? [31] For the Rock is not as our Rock, even our
enemies themselves being judges,” and the point here is the lament, it enters
into a lament, how could this have happened, how could Israel go down in discipline
unless it was that their Rock had sold them.
Now the word “Rock selling them” is a technical word, occurring for the
first time in the Bible here, and this is a word that will be used by almost
every writing prophet in God’s Word, they will…[tape turns]…
…my tail may be between my legs but that’s all right, I’ll come back,
and so you get back in fellowship and you can’t get back in fellowship by
yourself, can you? Don’t be too familiar
with 1 John 1:9 does not restore you to fellowship. It’s using 1 John 1:9 because of the finished
work of Christ in back of the verse, that’s why 1 John 1:9 works, but if there
wasn’t any finished work of Christ in back of it you could quote 1 John 1:9
from now until hell froze over and it wouldn’t solve one problem, not one. It’s only because of the finished work of
Christ that is applied by means of that promise; that’s why you can be
restored. So there’s not one person e
who can claim that God didn’t restore him when he met the conditions, and it’s
the same argument in verse 11.
Now verse 12, the last verse, Samuel says in spite of all this, every
time you were being disciplined, every time you confessed your sin, every time
God restored you, why is it that when you came to Nahash, that’s this battle
that has just occurred, when you come to Nahash you say you need a king. In other words, the people called upon Saul
to lead them in battle. Now it just
turns out in chapter 11 under the permissive will of God, God used that to
confirm Saul’s appointment, but verse 12 gives you the real divine viewpoint;
that was a compromise you just read last week, in case you might be
disturbed. It was a sheer 100%
compromise. They were not supposed to even
get Saul there to lead them in battle as their king, and then he says what did
you do that for, couldn’t you have confessed your sin, and left Saul as leader
but no, you couldn’t do that, you couldn’t trust the fact that God was your
King, and so what did you do? You went
ahead and you wanted the king, it was your sin, and God went along with your
sin but because God went along with your sin don’t turn it around the other way
and say well, God is going to bless.
We have trouble in Christian circles, what I call the blessing fallacy,
it operates this way. So and so does X,
and gets blessed. Therefore I will do X
and I will get blessed. No so and so may
be so far out in the toulies that he’s getting blessed and the blessing has
absolutely no connection with X, absolutely none whatever, it just happens that
he is getting blessing and it just happens he’s done X but you have no right to
associate the two. Do you realize that God may be blessing him in spite of the
fact that he’s doing X. So why should
you minimize your blessing because so and so does X and gets blessed? Nonsense.
You just stick with the Word of God and never mind all the X
factors. And it’s the same thing here,
they had no business, here X is calling upon the king. He says there’s no need for this because what
is the last word in verse 12, “The LORD your God was your king.” Why don’t you call on Him, why did you call
on Saul for? Do you remember the
story? What happened in chapter 11? In verse 3, the elders of Jabesh were under a
jam, and what did they do, verse 4, they came to Saul, and what did Saul do? Saul went along with them. Saul compromised; Saul went along and he,
actually, as far as God’s viewpoint was wrong.
What they should have done was stop the wheels right there and said now
look, you go and you talk to Jehovah about this, don’t come to me. That’s what Saul should have said but Saul
didn’t. And he went along with it. But verse 12 represents view of the whole
operation and it’s not a very pleasant view.
Now these first 12 verses have been a defense. Samuel has argued his case before the court
of the people. It is not that Samuel is
wrong, it is not God is wrong; therefore, conclusion, it must be that the
people are wrong so verses 13-19, the next section, the accusation and
judgment. Now verse 13, “Now, therefore,
behold the king whom ye have chosen, and whom you have desired! And, behold, the LORD has set a king over
you.” Now verse 13 gives you the two
standard wills of God. The first part of
verse 13 has to do with the people’s will, it’s negative volition, it’s a human
viewpoint gimmick, and God goes along with it, permissive will of God. Notice the language, you chose the king, you
wanted the centralized power, God gave it to you… God gave it to you!
Now verse 14 and 15 clarify the issue because before Samuel departs the
scene he wants the nation clear as to their source of blessing and their source
of discipline. So in verses 14-15 he
reiterates part of the book of Deuteronomy. Actually he goes back to the
section of the book of Deuteronomy, the blessings and the cursing section. In the book of Deuteronomy these are listed
in chapter 28; in Leviticus chapter 26, the blessings look like this and the
cursings look like this. The blessings
were military victory, for one thing.
This is one of the signs, the empirical signs that the nation was going
along; possession of the land was a second empirical sign of national
blessing. Economic prosperity was an
overt sign of positive volition and God’s blessing and a testimony before the
nation. Those were the four central
empirical evidences of blessing in the life of the nation. Now if the nation went on negative volition
all these were reversed. You had
military defeat in place of military victory; you had them thrown out of the
land in dispersion in place of their possession of the land; in place of
economic prosperity you had economic disaster and in place of a testimony you
had a most horrible witness.
So these are the blessings and the cursings. Now the issue under the Mosaic Law was the
positive or negative volition of the people.
Now what Samuel wants to teach in verses 14-15 is that the blessings and
the cursings have not changed in principle just because you’ve added on this
human viewpoint gimmick. So verse 14,
“If you will fear the LORD, and if you will serve Him, and if you obey His
voice, and if you will not rebel against the commandment of the LORD,” and by
the way, the rest of this is also “if,” it’s not a “then” as the King James,
“and if both you and also your king that reigns over you, continue following
the LORD your God,” And then it is understood that it will be well with you,
that is just understood in the Hebrew.
So it’s all if, if, if, if, if, if.
Now where in verse 14 do you ever see one clause that says the king will
get you out of a jam. Where do you see
that? It’s not there. Why?
Because the Mosaic Law still holds, God hasn’t changed the guts of the
treaty. All He has done is He’s
accommodated Himself further to the sinfulness of the people. He has gone down from plan A to plan B. And He has accommodated Himself for man’s
sinfulness but still the principle remains.
It is analogous, if you goof up badly in the Christian life God will put
you on plan B instead of plan A. The way
some of you look tonight you must be down on plan Z, but God does demote. But even when God demotes, even when God
demotes there can be a source of blessing and a source of cursing. The same it was the day you were born again. God never will demote you to the point where
you can’t have some blessing.
And so in verse 15 it’s the opposite, here’s the cursing, “But if ye
will not obey the voice of the LORD, but ye rebel against the commandment of
the LORD, then shall the hand of the LORD be against you,” and then there’s a
complicated phrase, which about the only way to translate it appears to be “be
against you and against your king.” The
word “fathers” first of all, doesn’t make any sense because it’s a future
judgment and that would be against the past tense. In the Hebrew it’s very confused and 1 Samuel,
as I told you when we started this, is one of the most confusing books to
translate. The text is one Gleason
Archer puts out in the introduction to the Old Testament, a very reputable
conservative scholar, points out that a likely explanation for the manuscript
being in such sad shape is that worms ate it; there was only one copy and there
just literally appears to be gaps taken out of the thing, and the Jews were
very pious and they would not change the text, it was the inspired Word of God,
so rather than plug in the holes they just left the holes. So you’re trotting along reading and we come
to a hole, by the way, a real good one next week, 1 Samuel 13:1, if you have a
New Scofield Bible you notice there’s a gap in there, and that is
representative of one of those places where nobody knows what’s going on and so
the most honest thing to do is just say so, and here is one of those things
which we don’t know what’s going on and I just tell you so, my guess is as good
as yours what that last noun is; I do not know, I just suggest “king” but I’m
not going to be dogmatic about it.
But verses 14-15 is the positive and the negative, and what is the
lesson? Blessing is the same way it
always was, it is always by positive volition; cursing is the same way it always
was, it is by negative volition. Now
verse 16, here is where the announcement is made that the whole kit and
caboodle here is one big fat compromise and God is not pleased with this. And so He makes known His displeasure. Verse 16, “Now, therefore, stand and see this
great thing, which the LORD will do before your eyes? [17] Is it not wheat
harvest today? I will call unto the
LORD, and he shall send thunder and rain, that ye may perceive and see that
your wickedness is great, which ye have done in the sight of the LORD, in
asking for yourselves a king. [18] And
so Samuel called unto the LORD, and the LORD sent thunder and rain that day;
and all the people greatly feared the LORD and Samuel. [19] And all the people
said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the LORD thy God, that we die not;
for we have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask for ourselves a king.”
So here you have the final divine viewpoint before Samuel passes off the
scene, that this was not God’s will for centralized power. People were robbed of freedom by this
monstrosity called a king. And in God’s
grace He’s going to turn it into something good. He’s going to show through this office the
person of Christ. But don’t ever, ever
reason backwards like that and say well, it’s good because after all if this
hadn’t have happened, how would God have ever revealed Christ in history. You be careful about that kind of reasoning
because you know where it’s going to get you in trouble? Because I can say oh yeah, well if Adam never
sinned, how would God have shown His love to you? See, you can’t reason that way, all you can
say is if Adam never sinned God would have had another way of showing His
love. You never can say that sin is
necessary for God’s plan in that sense.
And here it is where God is going to use this, yes, but God doesn’t
condone it.
Now in verse 20-25 the final challenge.
This is Samuel’s swan song to a nation and he never after this addresses
the nation as he does here. From this
point forward [tape slips or something, words missing: Verse 20, “And Samuel
said unto the people, Fear not: ye have done all this wickedness; yet turn not
aside from following the LORD, but serve the LORD with all your heart. [21]
“And turn ye not aside; for then should ye go after vain things, which cannot
profit nor deliver; for they are vain.”]
… And what Samuel is saying is why go to the idols, did the idols
deliver you from Egypt, do the idols give you anything in your life as a
believer? No. And so the same argument can be used against
us today, why should we as believers hinge onto idols. How were you saved in the first place? Now true, some of you were saved under very
confusing conditions, but by now if you have paid attention to the Word you
should understand that you were saved sheerly by grace. You were saved by grace; God loves you and in
His grace He chose you and He died for you and that was the basis of your
salvation and it wasn’t because you had so many dollars in the savings account
that God said well now if I save her then we she’ll contribute to the church
building fund or if I saved this person they can make a great contribution in
something or with their political connections, etc. God never saves you with ulterior motives,
God saves you because He loves you, period.
And if you happen to have these things fine, but if you don’t, that’s
fine too. God doesn’t look at those
things when He saves you, He looks at only one thing, your volition.
Verse 22, “For the LORD will not forsake His people for His great name’s
sake,” there is the answer to why Samuel says you still have hope. You can compromise your way all the way down
and commit every sin in the book and I mean it, you can sit here and think of
the worst sins and do it 14 hours a day from now until the time you die and you
will still be as saved after as you are tonight. Nobody likes that and the reason why people
don’t like that is because at the heart most of us are legalists and we can’t
stand grace. We want grace for ourselves
but not for the person sitting next to us or the person sitting in front of
us. But as far as God is concerned it’s
grace all the way and you can be as big a stinker as you want to and you still
are saved. It doesn’t touch your
salvation; now a few things will touch you, but your salvation will not be
touched. Now saying eternal security
this way always causes vibrations but when people vibrate they usually pay
attention better.
“For the LORD will not forsake His people for His great name’s sake,”
now you look at that “name’s sake,” that refers to the master plan of God. The master plan of God is that by His divine
essence, His divine essence will be proved in history, so that act after act
after act after act after act after act goes on and on and on and on in
history, just think of the divine essence shown in the national plan. Stop realize that you and I do not have to
prove ourselves to God but that God stoops… stoops mind you, to prove himself
to you and to me, that in the book of Revelation chapter 4 the saints can sing,
“Worthy art thou, O Lord, to receive the honor and the glory and the
praise.” Why is that sung at the end of
history and not during history? Because
only then will all the historic evidences of God’s essence be in. All of that will be assembled then, and when
it is the saints break out in that magnificent song; the master plan has been
fulfilled, God is who He claims to be truly.
Now the “name’s sake” is His [can’t understand word] in His
election. Let’s watch how the argument
goes. God is not going to forsake His
people. Who are His people? Under the Old Testament economy His people
are Israel. New Testament economy, the
Church made up of all born again believers.
That includes you if you have personally accepted Christ. He will not forsake you, now read yourself
into this; let’s just separate the nation out, the truth applies to you
tonight. If you are a believer God is
not going to forsake you, not because of you, but because of His name’s sake. Which means, that when God said at a certain
point in time I will save so and so, put your name in there.
Now God the Father said I’m going to save that person, it’s on the
eternal record. Now if God doesn’t wind
up in eternity having saved you, what happens to His Word and His
veracity. It goes right down the
drain. So the moment God promises to
save you that forces Him to save you because if He doesn’t He violates His
character, and this is the fantastic thing you’ve got going for you as a
believer. When you get discouraged and
you think everything is going against you and you know that you’re a creep in
God’s sight and you really realize it, and that you have no moral claim on Him
whatever, and you wonder what is it that is holding me up, it’s God’s honor,
that’s what; that’s what’s holding you up and that’s what’s holding me up. And God can’t let you go, no matter what a
stinker you are, not matter how many people you’ve double-crossed. You can go out and gun down 20% of the people
of the city of Lubbock and God still would have to save you. That caused a few to vibrate but that’s the
way it is; that is the way it is. God
will not permit His name to be violated.
Now I wouldn’t advise trying it for the very reason that God also has
the other side of the coin which is called divine discipline and it smarts so
just beware of applying things too literally.
Verse 23, the mark of the intercessor, this is part of what Samuel was
to do as he retired. This is one of the
greatest things… to me this shows the magnificent character of this man. He could have retired bitter, the nation had
rejected him. He had many years ahead of
him, he could have provided that nation with fantastic leadership, he could
have delivered the nation. After all,
remember what we said in 1 Samuel 7, he had a token deliverance right there;
Samuel could have done that again. He
could have been a bitter old man in his dying days and he could have retired
full of resentment and bitterness, but he didn’t. He was a man of grace and it must have hurt
him deeply, it’s going to hurt him again, Samuel is going to get hurt again
because as a man he loved Saul. And when
Saul turns out to be a clod and God says all right, Samuel, I’ve got another
job for you, you got down the road and I want you to anoint that son of Jesse,
you can tell how Samuel doesn’t like that either, and he’s hurt again because
he became personally attached to Saul.
And from the human point of view Samuel loved Saul. But he’s a man that in spite of how many
times he gets hurt he rolls right on through; he’s a man of grace. And here after the people have rejected, and
in spite of the fact that they didn’t have any claim legally against Samuel, in
spite of the fact they booted him out literally, for this new king…
Verse 23, “Moreover, as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the
LORD in ceasing to pray for you; but I will teach you the good and the right
way.” That’s the slogan for the rest of
this elderly man’s life. He’s not going
to retire in bitterness, he’s going to end his life in tune with the Word. Notice what he says, “God forbid,” that is
the most powerful exclamation point in the Hebrew that is imaginable, and it
doesn’t say “God forbid.” It is the word
that means profane, translated in all seriousness, the closest English
approximation of this phrase is “I’ll be damned if I’m not going to pray for
you.” Now how’s that for some good
expression, doesn’t that sound spiritual.
That’s what the Hebrew text says, this word “profane” literally means
that, it means to become ceremonially damned; that’s what the word means, that
as strong as this word means, and this recurs in the New Testament when you see
“God forbid” that I do something, Paul’s statement, that’s the expression, and
that’s what I’ve been trying to tell some of you, you still don’t understand
the power of the original language in the text. These men said what was on their minds and
they used language that expressed it and what Samuel is saying here is I am a
man of grace and I’ll be damned if I’m going to lower myself to the resentment
and the bitterness that some of you people have, I’m going to continue to pray,
even though you’ve kicked me in the face, even though you’ve driven me out of
political office for this king, I’m going to stick with grace and I’m going to
hold you up in prayer every day, and I’m going to teach you the Word and I’m
going to go on teaching the Word until there’s not a breath left in my
body. Now there’s a man of grace.
Finally verse 24-25, his last closing words, “Only fear the LORD, and
serve Him in truth with all your heart; for consider how great things He has
done for you. [25] But if you shall still do wickedly, you shall be…” and the
word is not consumed, this would tend to violate eternal security and the word
means to be blown away, and it means to be shipped out of the land under the
fifth degree of discipline in Leviticus 26, “both you and your king.” You see how he adds that, a final jab, you
and all your gimmicks, you’re going to be disciplined just as fast with the
gimmicks as you would be without the gimmicks.
Next week we’re going to see what this incumbent does in the
office. Never forget the divine
viewpoint of the king of 1 Samuel 12; it’s God’s plan B and you might consider
if you look at your own spiritual life whether through operation goof-off you
may be in the same status as the nation Israel, you may be operating on plan B
for your life. Don’t get discouraged,
because God can bless you in plan B like He can in any other plan.