Clough Manhood Series Lesson 28

Samuel’s last address: Saul: A Carnal Leader – 1 Samuel 12-14

Tonight we deal with Saul. I’m going to skip the prayer because of the length of some of the episodes of Saul in the early part of his life and the reason for that, covering all of this as a unit is because like we have said all along, the manhood series is more of a topical study than an exegetical study, and so we have to take things in broad sweeps to show the principles and not get buried down in the details. We’ve learned a number of things by watching these men. First of all, we’ve learned that the man who anointed Saul, Samuel, the prophet, that he was a man who had mastery of the simple basics in his life. As far as spiritual life is concerned, Samuel had it together. He utilized the faith technique, he knew that there were certain things that were the most important things in his life, the Word of God, and he put the Word of God first and he paid a price for it because inevitably it seemed that all of his friends were spiritual losers and every time that he managed to make a friendship with someone they dropped by the wayside. So because that was the case, Samuel found over and over again that it was a very lonely life of being a spiritual leader. Yet he endured, and as we have seen, Samuel did not become a perfectly sanctified man; he had lots of –R learned behavior patterns until the day he died, apparently chief of which were those controlling his own home. But at least Samuel had it mainly together at the core of his life.

Tonight we turn to 1 Samuel 12 because this is the last address that he formally makes to the nation as Saul takes over the kingship. To master the argument of the book of 1 & 2 Samuel, you want to remember that these are not just disconnected Bible stories. They are beads on a necklace and they are all tied together and the great argument of the book of Samuel, for Samuel was in a production, probably by the seminary students who occupied the school of Samuel. The whole object here of the book of Samuel is to outline the rise of the monarchy. So we have this as the theme, and whenever we interpret something we have to interpret in the light of the theme of the whole book. This is why, when someone gets into Samuel at a certain chapter and verse and says here’s a principle we get out of this, and they don’t relate it to the overall theme and they come out with the wrong interpretation. And this is what I understand Bill Gothard did with Abigail, and it’s because he insisted on jumping into the Abigail incident and just looking at that one incident and not relating it to the overall argument of the book and the result came out that Abigail was wrong. Well, Abigail was right and you can show that she was right on the basis of her performance relative to the whole structure of the book of 1 Samuel. So it’s dangerous just to take a passage here and a passage there, and start taking spiritual principles out if you haven’t been too careful in your exegesis.

Now in 1 Samuel 12:20 Samuel gives some closing remarks, and these are recorded by the Holy Spirit because they are aimed at every man who would be king. Now the spiritual application of this whole book, as far as a man is concerned, is going back to the idea that all right, so what, we’re not going to be kings of Israel, what has 1 Samuel got to do with it. Because the qualities of the king of Israel have to be qualities that men who are Christians have. So the models, the model of the king that we are trying to get surfaced, out of all the hundred and one stories, is one aim: produce some sort of a template or model of what a king looks like. Then later on, having this model, we can evaluate the person of Christ; we can evaluate other candidates for the office.

Now two candidates figure prominently in the book of Samuel, one is a flunky and one passes: Saul and David. Saul is the exact opposite, spiritually, of David. Now God knew what He was doing and He actually elected Saul to occupy the throne first to show everyone how not to do it. And as P. T. Barnum once said, “there’s a sucker born every minute,” and God finds plenty of them, and He picked Saul as one of the suckers to hold the throne and do all sorts of things to show us what ought not to be done, and that was Saul’s great ministry in life; showing us how not to do it. And then David came along and he shows us how to do it. So the theme of Saul versus David is a theme of opposites; not only so, but later on in history they became even more significant because the theme of Saul versus David becomes the adumbration of the theme of Satan versus Christ.

Think of the parallels for a minute. While Saul is sitting on the throne, David has been anointed so he can sit on the throne. While Satan rules as the God of this world, Jesus Christ has been anointed as the King whose rightful domain is this world. While David has to hide from Saul’s attacks, and sort of go into the wilderness and wait until the day of the deposing of Saul, so Christ had to wait until the deposing of the day of Satan. So we have numerous parallels and why David’s writings, for example, always give us comfort, that is the Psalms, it’s simple: because David is under Saul’s dominion and persecution. So this is you always sense, even the [can’t understand word] of believers senses this, that when you read the book of Psalms there’s something there that is very obvious and it speaks to you quickly, and the reason you observe that from the Psalms is because the setting is like our Christian life. We are foreigners, we are those who are working inside Satan’s dominion, in an analogous position to David inside Saul’s kingdom.

So the first of these two kings, Saul, arises at this point in history and Samuel has a few pointed words. And in these words, 1 Samuel 12:20-25, he directs his criticism or his guidance about any man who would be king. “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 not aside; for then should ye go after vain things, which cannot profit nor deliver; for they are vain. [22] For the LORD will not forsake His people for His great name’s sake, because it has please the LORD to make you His people. [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. [24] 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 ye shall still do wickedly, you shall be consumed, both you and your king.”

Now the point that Samuel is making here, verse after verse, is shown up in the word “vain” in verse 21. The word “vain” here means empty, it doesn’t mean necessarily something what we would call grossly sinful, it just means a waste, just a pure waste. Translated in other terms maybe some of you are more familiar with, human good would be included in this vanity. Human good is simply morality that Satan can stand; Satan can stand a lot of morality. This is where people are wholly wrong; you can whitewash a system and produce a morality and Satan will be one of your key backers. Do you want to know why? Because Satan wants respectability for his kingdom. Satan wants orderliness, otherwise he’s discredited. His taste becomes too obviously evil to people if the grossness of it all surfaces. So Satan’s interested in keeping it all below the table so people don’t see it all. And that way you can’t spot Satan’s moves from God’s moves. So Satan is in the human good business. Satan loves moral crusades as long as they don’t divert attention to the source of morals. That’s fine. For example, as long as people are convinced that they can become better citizens and better spiritually by being better people, and by doing more good things, Satan enjoys that, he claps for that kind of a program, because that kind of a program simply enforces a works motif rather than a grace motif.

So Samuel is arguing that the people begin in their heart, you’ll notice how he starts. At the end of verse 20, “turn not aside from following the LORD, but serve the LORD with all your heart.” There he’s talking about positive volition toward the Word of God. And when that fits the negative volition, one of the next results is human good. That will always follow spiritual rebellion. In some cases, when human good dissolves and you go into a further state of chaos and licentiousness, but not always. And the reason this is important is because Saul, morally, was head and shoulders above this. No question about it. Morally speaking, from normal social standards, Saul was a better man than David.

Well, then Samuel goes on and gives him assurance. He says, in verse 22, the Lord won’t forsake you; he gives a common platform for faith. There’s no need, he says, to trust in something else. God will not forsake His people because of His name. That means that God has a reputation to sustain, that when God has elected someone to a final destiny, He’s not going to let go of that election, “for His name’s sake.” This is why often in prayer, we’ll design a petition, engineered so that God, You ought to answer petition X because if You don’t answer petition X then it desecrates Your honor; it harms Your reputation or Your name. And then Samuel goes on to point out in verse 23 that the election of God is not automatic; it’s by means. Please notice, verse 23 does follow verse 23 does follow verse 22.

If Samuel believed verse 22 the way some Christians believe it he’d stop with a big fat period at the end of verse 22 and say that’s it, no sweat, God isn’t going to forsake you, no problem. That would be fatalism and fatalism is wholly anti-Scriptural. God’s elective decree is going to be carried out in history because people have concerns and means to that end. So we have the situation where God rests; He has decreed that Israel is going to get down here to point X through time, but there’s going to be means by which Israel gets there and one of the means or the boosts that is given to Israel is intercessory prayer. The implication is that if intercessory prayer is not made, then the elective goal will not occur. Now this is hard to track, but this is the same problem we’ve gone back with perseverance and so on, you’ve got to think in your mind and visualize a theoretical option of election being fractured to appreciate the pressure here. If no intercession in prayer occurs, there is going to be no final solution on God’s terms, because God’s election specifies that, in fact, a person will get down here through intercessory prayer.

Maybe, to visualize it another way, let’s say here’s a person that is one who is destined to be conformed to the image of Christ. How does he get there? He has to become a Christian. How does he become a Christian? By an act of faith. That is a need along the path and if he doesn’t believe in Christ, you can say what you want to by election, he’s not going to be conformed to the image of Christ. Election doesn’t operate in a vacuum; it operates through historic means. And this always… always has to be understood or you wind up in a the fatalist camp where it doesn’t matter what’s going to happen, what’s going to happen is going to happen. And you destroy every single means. So please notice verse 23 is built into verse 22, to balance it. Verse 22 is a statement of sovereignty; verse 23 is a statement of human responsibility. Samuel has a role to play in the life of his nation.

This is not often understood and in our day this is doubly important to understand because it is a human viewpoint thing of irresponsibility, we all have it, have had it since the fall, but we have had the problem of irresponsibility increased in our own generation. And therefore, when you want a Christian organization you always have the people that come on in and they hear the word “grace” and ah, grace, that means I can just do nothing. And their idea of grace is a fatalistic grace, that it’s just a roller coaster deal all the way. Huh-un, if you want to see grace in operation look at the Gethsemane experience of the Lord Jesus Christ; does that look like a roller coaster deal, Jesus just kind of floated in one end of the Garden of Gethsemane and just floated right on out the other way, wasn’t upset at all, never shed a tear, never made any effort because Gods will will be done, sort of floated along like an air mattress, all the way on through. Now that’s not the picture you get of Jesus Christ. You find His blood pressure so high it’s fracturing the capillaries in His forehead. That’s agitation. Jesus Christ is agitated in the Garden. Jesus Christ could, theoretically, visualizing it the way I’m talking about, walked over the ridge and said I’m sorry, I’m not going to do it, and then we’d all be in great shape. There’d be no salvation whatever. Jesus Christ had to deal with His own human choice in the Garden of Gethsemane. And it was not an easy thing for Jesus Christ to deal with. So understand the pressure upon Christ. Yes, it was foreordained that He go to the cross; yes it was certain that He wouldn’t cop out. But certainty doesn’t denote irresponsibility; certainty is administered by historic means.

Now particularly people out of the non-Christian human viewpoint background have a hard time with this thing. Those men who are in positions of responsibility in a local church see this. I was just talking to some of them. And some of the men have worked very, very hard and they get very discouraged by people who promise to be at a certain place at a certain time to do a certain thing and they cop out. Now understandably there are times when people get sick and have to fall by the wayside, and have accidents and so on, and somebody in the family gets sick and so forth. This is legitimate. But we have in certain areas of our own congregation places where people simply aren’t assuming their responsibility, whether it’s the music situation and all the years of being scheduled people and they promise to be here at a certain time and fifteen minutes before the service there’s a telephone call and says I can’t make it. Now in some cases there’s a genuine emergency; no problem, this just happens, we understand that. But if you’re going out of town you know darn well you planned to go out of town; you didn’t decide to go out of town in five minutes. Well, then why can’t you have the decency to call somebody on the committee and tell them that. Same thing with the ushers, same thing with a lot of people.

You see, it’s selfishness, because here’s a person sitting here and there may be two or three other people sitting there and they wind up having to take your load because you don’t give a damn. That’s just what it is, I just don’t plan to give a dam enough to let someone else know enough ahead of time so they can plan; it’s that kind of thing. And it’s just a sinful lazy attitude, and it certainly shows a very interesting thing. It shows that you basically have a chaotic lifestyle, because if your schedule is so chaotic that you decide things five minutes before it happens, that tells me it must be this over here, this over here, over here, and probably we could take an inventory of your lifestyle and find out this and that areas where this is going on and you’re wondering why you feel like you’re spinning your wheels. Well, it’s because you have the “I don’t give a damn” attitude all over the place, and it’s showing up.

So people can be, in the human viewpoint sense, very poor stewards of time and the result is they antagonize people around them that depend upon them. And finally they wonder why they don’t have any friends. They don’t have any friends because it’s dangerous to be a friend of yours. Here we are lifting two cement bags and you collapse on me all the time, I’m going pick another teammate. See, so it all goes together, and this is why we have to go through the process of learning. And this is why the men on the committees are trying hard, but some of them are having an awful job of it because of this attitude that others have. Well, it goes back to this fatalism, a laziness and a means problem.

So Samuel, in verse 23, assumes responsibility and for the rest of his life he carries forth that responsibility: I am not going to cease to pray for you. I may not like you, at times I may be very irritated at you, but before the Lord I have said I am going to pray for you, and so I will. Now there’s stability, and that’s treating other people like God treats us. And then he warns them of discipline in verses 24-25 if you don’t. Well, that’s the setting for Saul and Saul made three great mistakes very early in his administration. We will only take two tonight in the interest of time.

The first one is found in 1 Samuel 13:1-14, when Saul reigned. Now in the reign of Saul, remember the setting. God is trying to set forth an illustration of how not to do it. Saul represents human viewpoint in its highest quality. Saul represents what the good, outstanding citizen would demand of a public official. He’s got a good family background, apparently well educated. He’s got the charisma to appear in public, but he lacks one basic thing; it goes back to what we discussed the other night about the summum bonum, the highest good. What is the highest good? 99% of the people, if you asked them, what is the summum bonum, will say the greatest good for the greatest number or something like that. That’s the summum bonum. That’s the summum bonum of most political thought today, the greatest good for the greatest number. That is totally Judas Iscariot kind of thinking. Summum bonum in the Scripture is the greatest good for God. And incidentally, the spin off is that it will always be the greatest good for men too; but that’s not the goal, you don’t get there by aiming at man, you get there by aiming at God. And that’s what Samuel is warning; he says whoever is king around here better have their summum bonum together, and they’d better have it oriented to the glory of God and not people.

All right, this is the scene; watch how it plays out in 1 Samuel 13:1-14; remember now, here is a male believer in a position of leadership. He comes out of a human viewpoint background and his summum bonum is what we will put in parenthesis “good”, in the sense it’s good for people; like Judas Iscariot, he would give money to the poor that would otherwise (quote) “be wasted,” (end quote) on God. “Saul reigned a year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel,” this is a confused text in the Hebrew, we don’t know really what it is, if we could solve what verse 1 is we wouldn’t have a gap in Old Testament chronology; but nobody knows the text, the Masoretic text, a worm ate it or something, and the Masorites would never go in re-fix the text so, particularly in 1 Samuel, scholars literally think that a worm ate one of the only manuscripts that they had in Babylon. And God bless the worm because he chewed out a lot of out a lot of our words, and because the Massorites were very loyal to the text they felt very timid about ever changing the text. They weren’t like the men who made the Septuagint. So they left it, so here the Masoretic text sits blank, and if we could only fill in these things it’d be nice, but the sovereignty of God is over worms and we just have to trust the fact that the worm did not break God’s sovereign plan, he just kind of fouled it up a little bit as far as we’re concerned.

[2] “Saul chose three thousand men of Israel; two thousand were with Saul in Michmash, and in Mount Bethel, and a thousand were with Jonathan in Gibeah of Benjamin; and the rest of the people he sent every man to his tent. [3] And Jonathan smote the Garson of the Philistines that was in Geba, and the Philistines heard of it. And Saul blew the trumpet throughout all the land, saying, Let the Hebrews hear.”

Now the background of this situation is that the king is supposed to deliver the people. What ought to happen is the Philistines get kicked out of the land. Now when we went through Samuel I went through all the geography of this particular location, of Michmash and where it happened, but we won’t do that tonight, just suffice it as two separate garrisons here. Saul has divided with Jonathan; Saul’s up here, Jonathan down here, and there’s a Philistine element throughout this while area, massive amounts, military buildup. Well, Jonathan takes the offense and it’s most interesting that though Jonathan is the son of Saul, because Jonathan is clear spiritual, he knows doctrine, he has a quality his father doesn’t have and that’s aggressiveness. Not recklessness; we’ll watch reckless aggressiveness here later, but Jonathan has a spiritual aggressiveness that says there the enemy is, and there’s our land and the enemy is uncircumcised, they’re not covenant people. That’s what the word means, they’re not covenant people, they don’t belong here so we’re going to kick them out. And so let’s do it, the sooner the better; he wants to get at it and really do something.

1 Samuel 13:3, “So Jonathan smote the garrison, [of the Philistine that was in Geba, and the Philistines heard of it. And Saul blew the trumpet throughout all the land, saying, Let the Hebrews hear],” he struck the first blow, and the trumpet calls the news, it was a way of conveying news, the news goes throughout Israel. [4] “All Israel heard it said that Saul had smitten a garrison of the Philistines,” this is legitimate, even though Jonathan did it it comes out under the name of the king, “Saul had smitten a garrison of the Philistines, and Israel also was held in abomination with the Philistines.” Now the word “an abomination” is a Hebrew word, it means to stink. And this automatically shows you the mental attitude of the people. Instead of rejoicing in the new that Jonathan had just clobbered a garrison over here, they begin to be afraid; they begin to say oh-oh, this has broken international relations. Why, we’ve severed peace, people aren’t going to like us, and the whole object of the news report isn’t the victory of Jonathan, isn’t the fact that he just slaughtered, killed and destroyed evil people; the whole problem is what are the people going to think of us. Now doesn’t that sound familiar; haven’t you heard that somewhere before.

It’s interesting to watch how the Dutch handle this terrorist attack on their children. I told you the Dutch weren’t going to put up with it, because the Dutch historically have been a very strong people; there’s not another people on earth that have taken on the ocean and pushed it off their farmland. And that’s what the Dutch have done, and you’ve heard the expression, that’s “a hard-headed Dutchman.” Well, that’s where it comes from. The Dutch traditionally are very tough, stubborn people. And they’re not going to put up with if you mess around with their kids. And it’s interesting to watch some of the news reporters just fall all over themselves; oh, the Dutch went in and killed those terrorists, now isn’t that… they could have just postponed it and it would have come out all right. That thinking afflicts everyone today, with the result we encourage the bullies, we encourage the evil people. That is not love, it is an act of love by civil authorities to destroy evil wherever they find it, and if it’s terrorists, kill them first, before they kill you; simple name of the game. And so the Dutch did a very commendable thing; they did the only thing that godly government officials could do in that kind of a situation. Many of those government officials are Reformed Protestants who study the Word very carefully.

The Dutch, historically, have had a tremendous government; not so in the present but in the past. One of the Prime Ministers of Holland was Abraham Kuyper, you can walk into the church library and pull out the classic text on the Holy Spirit and it was written by Abraham Kuyper. Those of you in the men’s class know that Abraham Kuyper devised presuppositional apologetics. Now you name another head of state who has that theological acuity in the 20^th century. I don’t know of one. So the Dutch have been very, very much blessed because in the past in their country they have had a great in depth teaching of the Word of God. Incidentally, in the last go round, in 1973 with Israel, do you know the one country that stuck by Israel: Holland. Now look at that, little Holland. The Franks were all upset with somebody what somebody was going to think, about them; the Germans were all upset about what somebody was going to think about them; the Italians didn’t know what anybody was thinking about them, and we go on from there. But the Dutch, who had no resources, who literally faced the North Sea with only a dike separating them, they said I don’t care, we stay with Israel. Now those are honorable people; they’re people of principle and they’re to be deeply admired for this kind of thing.

Well, Jonathan was one of those kind and the news comes out, verse 4, all garbled, obviously came filtering through Saul’s general headquarters and on the way out to the newscaster got garbled. 1 Samuel 13:5, so “the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots” it says in the King James, there’s a problem again with the text there, “and six thousand horsemen.” Actually it probably reads closer to “ three thousand chariots and six thousand horsemen, and the people as the sand which is on the seashore in multitude; and they came up,” they’re going to get Israel. Now watch the situation. Jonathan is not stupid; he knows his military science and knows something; you Philistines are kind of crazy bringing three thousand chariots up here because this is hill country; you’re not going to use three thousand chariots in the hills; what are you going to do, drive up the rocks and down again. Do you know why they brought three thousand chariots? To intimidate people. The chariot was equivalent to a tank today and there are areas in Israel where tanks can’t go. You drive a tank up some of these hills, there’s loose rock, the rock gets in the track, you throw a track and a tank doesn’t go anywhere without its tracks, and every time you replace a track, at least on the American heavy tanks it’s a $5,000 bill. So army commanders aren’t interested in running track vehicles up into loose rock areas where their tracks are going to throw. So it’s the same thing today. The tanks may be used to intimidate but they’re not really useful out there in the battlefield in this terrain. So we have in this verse intimidation working. In verse 4 intimidation’s already worked.

1 Samuel 13:6, “When the men of Israel saw that they were hedged in, for the people were distressed, then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets, and among rocks, and in high places, and in pits.” They’re really on the ball, just what you need, a good mental attitude for the army. [7] “And some of the Hebrews went over the Jordan [to the land of Gad and Gilead].” They decided to take a long leave, trying to get some R&R over in Amman some place. “As for Saul, he was yet in Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling.” And that shows you something; men who have a lot of human good and no spirituality cannot bring confidence in people. Now it doesn’t mean that they do something special that alienates people; it’s just that people intuitively sense indecision. A man who doesn’t know what’s right and what’s wrong doesn’t have his categories clear. And therefore, they either dilly dally around and people begin to wonder and they lose confidence.

On the other hand, you can watch in history, when a decision is made and something happens, people fall into line. Think of the difference between December 1941 and July or August of 1964. In December 1941 Pearl Harbor was attacked and we had a clear moral issue. Americans were galvanized into action; we go get ‘em, no problem. But in the Gulf [can’t understand word] in Viet Nam the moral issue was never debated; it was never brought to a full national discussion and all during the Viet Nam war we had half-hearted attempts at dealing with the problem. So we’ve got a situation here; these people are afraid, not because of any physical factor. After all, these people have fought and have won victories, back in the days of the judges, back in the days of the invasion of the land. They’re trembling here because of a lack of spiritual decision. And there’s only one man around that’s doing anything and that’s Jonathan; his father is not.

So verse 8, here’s the beginning of Saul’s first failure. Saul “tarried seven days, according to the set time that Samuel had appointed; but Samuel came not to Gilgal, [and the people were scattered from him].” Now turn back to 1 Samuel 10:8 and you’ll see the prophet’s instruction. The role between Samuel and Saul is analogous to the role between the Word of God and a male leader. In other words, Samuel said Saul, the Word will rule your life, I am the Word of God for you; the Bible isn’t finished so until the Bible was finished they had prophets. So Samuel says, “And you will go down before me to Gilgal; and, behold, I will come down unto you, with burnt offerings, and to offer sacrifice; seven days you will wait, until I come to you, and I will show you what to do.” What’s the summum bonum? The summum bonum in life is the Word, occupation with Christ, focusing on what the Word has to say. So that’s what Samuel says to him.

Now what does Saul do? Well, already the writer is giving you a hint, in verse 4 everybody is kind of falling apart; by the time you read verse 6 you know everybody’s in panic palace, and by the time you get to verse 8 you begin to suspect Saul is in panic palace, because he waits and he waits and he waits, he doesn’t see Samuel. Samuel is not going to be late; Samuel will be on time. He’s not like the people that are always coming to the 11:00 o’clock service at 11:20. Samuel is a person who is always there just right on time. But he hasn’t come and it’s late in the day and so now we have the situation.

1 Samuel 13:9, here’s his action and watch how he justifies it. “And Saul said, Bring here a burnt offering to me, and peace offerings. And he offered the burnt offering.” Did he have religious jurisdiction to enter the priesthood? He did not. That was a separate office. He had no jurisdiction from God. [10] “And it came to pass that, as soon as he made an end of the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came;” now watch, here Mr. Human Good operates. “And Saul went out to meet him, that he might salute [bless] him. [11] And Samuel said, What have you done? And Saul said, Well, I saw that the people were scattered from me, and you didn’t come within the days appointed, the Philistines gathered themselves together at Michmash,” see, circumstance, circumstance, circumstance, and I am justified on the basis of circumstance to disobey the Scriptures. And because of that principle, [12] “Therefore, said I, The Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made supplication unto the LORD; I forced myself,” now look at that, now isn’t that cute, “I forced,” it was such a burdensome decision Samuel, I just really had to twist my own arm to make me do this, it’s a great, great sacrifice, “… and I offered a burnt offering.

Verse 13, “And Samuel said to Saul, You have done foolishly; you have not kept the word [commandment] of the LORD thy God, which He commanded you; for now would the LORD have established thy kingdom upon Israel forever. [14] But now thy kingdom shall not continue. The LORD has sought Him a man after his own heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be general over His people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you.”

The tragedy of this failure of Saul is great. You’ll notice the ultimate result in verse 13 is he’s his dynasty. Translated in modern political terms, that’s what it means. The Lord could have established thy kingdom forever, meaning he could have had that 2 Samuel 7 Davidic Covenant, that could have been delivered to Saul, but it isn’t. The Lord could have done it, but now your kingdom shall not continue. That doesn’t mean it’s going to die right on the vine but it does mean that there will be no Saulite dynasty. Saul was the last member of his family to sit on the throne; there was an abortive attempt to take one of his sons and take over the throne later in competition with David, but it didn’t pan out and that dynasty was destroyed.

Said another way, Saul had the theoretical possibility of being the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, in the dynastic sense, of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he just lost out right here. Why? Because he is in violation, he’s a picture of the autonomous man. But you notice a characteristic of human good in autonomous thinking, and when the summum bonum is always trotted out as in verse 11, why, I saw the people were scattered from me, I’ve got an excuse; the good of the people I’m thinking about, think of those poor people living in the caves, think of the poor people that have crossed the Jordan. Why, Samuel, think of the poor people that are going to get killed here if something isn’t done. So Samuel, you just ought to pin the medal right on here because I saved the day. No he didn’t; the day didn’t need to be saved. It was under the prior control of the sovereign God. So here we have a man who was a failure and he fails in a very simple point. He has the wrong summum bonum; he is oriented toward the things of man; he is on negative volition to the authority of God. He fails to use the faith technique of trusting the promises. He can’t trust. In other words, he is bumped out of God’s will by circumstantial pressure.

Now let’s look at it in the simple terms of our bottom circle. Here’s the circle of fellowship that we have with God. This circle will depict the will of God at any given moment for the believer. At any point we are either in fellowship or out of fellowship; so here we are in fellowship, it doesn’t mean we’re perfect because this is the will of God so far revealed to us. But in that area the Lord considers us in fellowship, so here we are inside this circle. When we sin we get outside the circle, then we confess and get back in the circle. That’s the transaction that I’m sure every Christian that’s been a Christian for two or three hours has done a couple hundred times. So we are all familiar with that little transaction. Now what happens here is that the Lord tests our ability to stay in the bottom circle by bringing pressure. This is just the way the tests determine life; they are designed that way.

Turn to the classic passage that proves the point in 1 Corinthians 10:13, tremendous assurance. This is a message from God to every Christian that He has superintended the circumstantial pressure in our life. “There has no temptation,” we can translate that “testing, taken you but such as is common to man,” that means that God has these pressures come in upon us and they’re not unique to us, first of all. The only person who have had unique pressure fall upon him… well, there’s two, one was Adam and it was only unique because he was the first one, and the second person is the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ did have some unique temptations. Don’t worry, you won’t have to be tempted that way. So verse 13 tells us that we have a temptation, at least one other member of the human race has had to face before we had to face it. “…but God is faithful, who will not permit,” the word “permit” draws emphasis to his divine attribute of sovereignty, God “will not permit you to be tempted above that which you are able.”

Now look at that; that means that prior to allowing these testings to come our way God has an iron perimeter around us. You may not think that when the house collapsed and the car wouldn’t start and somebody ran out on you and this fell in and the business deal didn’t go, and all the rest of the chaos of life, but this verse says that there’s a seal around you and that seal is impenetrable… impenetrable except under God’s authorization. So God is not allowing us to be pressured above that which He considers us able to take at any given moment. So whenever there’s a pressure that comes through the perimeter, the first thing we ought to say to ourselves is that in my estimate maybe I can’t take it, but somebody higher than me thinks I am capable of handling this situation or it never would have come through my perimeter. So maybe that would be an encouragement next time a disaster hits, to think that, in terms of that way, a positive way toward the disaster, and say well, it’s a compliment. The whole thing fell in, what a compliment, because what has happened is that God has just assumed that you have grown spiritually enough to take that kind of a chaos situation.

And then it assures us of something else; it assures that “with the temptation, make a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” It’s saying that there is a provision around here somewhere and the provision is found in the Word of God, and that’s why it’s so necessary to know the will of God, the tools that are available from the Word of God so when the pressure hits you know how to handle it.

There are various illustrations of this in Scripture. And we’ll see Jonathan use the tools. Jonathan faced the same pressure his dad did. Jonathan actually got into more combat than his father ever did. And so Jonathan had to use these tools of Scripture. Jonathan knew that if God had 40,000 Philistines there and they had their 3,000 chariots, it didn’t make any difference because God thought enough of Jonathan to say Jonathan, you I trust have the tools available and I think your competent to handle the assignment. That’s the way to look upon pressures and trials, a direct assignment from the Lord. And by the magnitude of the trials shows you the magnitude of confidence that He has in you. You see the Lord oftentimes has more confidence in you than you have in you. And this is a hard thing to understand this way because the Lord can see things in our soul that we can’t see. We think, and we emphasize oftentimes we want to avoid autonomy and so we tend to emphasize the sin nature and the negative side; that’s good because that keeps us balanced.

But we fail to understand that there are some good things going for us, that God has seen certain strengths in our soul. We don’t see those, and God says I’m going to show you what you can take. This is what He’s done often in military training. Some of the obstacle courses and the schedule, getting up at some God-forsaken hour in the morning and going out on the course and coming back in the evening and hitting the sack and getting up in the morning and doing this day after day after day after day. If someone told you that that you could do that you’d say you’re crazy, I’d never make it. And the whole point of the course is to show you that you can do it, because some day your life will depend upon you having the confidence to know well, I remember one time I did it and it didn’t kill me so I can do it again. All right, that’s a way that God has in the Christian way of life. He puts you through a boot camp situation to show you what you can do spiritually, so that later on in the real, even worse situation, you can say well, that’s all right, I’ve faced trials like this before, I can work with it. Not in your own strength, but using God’s tools.

So 1 Corinthians 10:13 is a basic verse that every Christian ought to memorize. Write it on a 3x5 card and stick it on the mirror so every morning when you shave you can read this to yourself. So back to the cute little move Saul’s pulling off back here. Saul decides that the pressure has got to him; that’s the whole center of verse 11. He is saying that I have a pressure situation that has broken through my perimeter and I can’t meet it God’s way. So, I am justified in doing it my way; my way is better than God’s way. Now we do this to degrees and you know how it comes out; you have your own way and I have mine but we have our ways of justifying it to our conscience. Well, I couldn’t help it, and I know the Word says that but… BUT…. A friend of mine in the ministry used to refer to that as the motorboat Christian, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, that kind of thing, always fouling up the command of the word with “but” and qualifying it. All right, so there’s the first problem with Saul.

Now the second one, we won’t go into all the details in the interest of time, so let’s go to 1 Samuel 14:16 where we get into the thick of it. Now this shows you something even more serious about people who operate in the energy of the flesh, who operate with human good discipline; because they have no confidence in this perimeter idea, when the pressure mounts up and the pressure comes in like this and they sit here, they’ll hop over here to avoid the pressure and get out of fellowship. Well, when they get out of fellowship, then what happens, then they have –R learned behavior patterns that dominate the life. And one of these behavior patterns that dominates the life, always does, is panic. And together and associated with panic is frustration and anger and then resentment. And then finally resentment leads to vengeance. And this is just the sequence of emotional responses that are sinful in life. Now watch what happens here in 1 Samuel 14:16.

“The watchmen of Saul in Gibeah of Benjamin looked; and, behold, the multitude melted away, and they went on beating one another. [17] Then said Saul unto the people who were with him, Number no, and let us see who is gone from us.” The situation here is the famous case where Jonathan went over and began to raid the Philistine garrison, and he was having a good time of it. Saul was doing nothing, he decided he would take box lunch under a pomegranate tree and relax until he could worry about some more things. So while he was immobilized through worry Jonathan was out there saying hey, what are we waiting for. There’s so many of us, let’s go kill ‘em. He went over there with an attitude of let’s see how many we can kill, let’s see how many the Lord will give us this time. A real tiger. So he went over there and he found out the Lord gave him a whole garrison, and it caused a panic over there. And Saul is sitting over here and someone says hey, would you stop munching the pomegranates and look up here Saul, look what’s going on over there. He hands him the glasses and Saul looks, holy mackerel, the whole garrison is in chaos.

So that’s the scene where we pick it up here in verse 16. And Saul wants a census; that’s what he asks for with the “number” in verse 17, he says obviously some of our soldiers are over there, let’s fall in and see if all are present and accounted for here. 1 Samuel 14:18, “So Saul said unto Ahijah, Bring here the ark of God. For the ark of God was at that time with the children of Israel. [19] And it came to pass, while Saul talked to the priest, that the noise that was in the host of the Philistines went on and increased; and Saul said to the priest, Withdraw your hand. [20] And Saul and all the people that were with him assembled themselves, and they came to the battle; and, behold, every man’s sword was against his fellow, and there was a very great confusion].”

Now notice what happens here. Just notice what happens. You see what Saul tried to do in verse 18; he started to go through the motions of meeting a positive situation with reliance upon Scripture. Here it’s the opposite of pressure; here it’s an opportunity to surge out instead of facing a pressure in. And he does the same thing. He can’t stand a little bit of pressure, he can’t stand positive opportunity and he meets both of them the wrong way. When the pressure comes in he skips out of fellowship to try to solve and meet the pressure his way; then when an opportunity comes up in stead of going to the priest, asking God’s direction, now God, we’ve got a fantastic open door here, what’s the best way to handle it, so he starts to do it, he gets the whole thing set up, asks the priest to start, and he keeps on and it looks better and better and juicer and juicer, and he says ah, forget that, I can handle this, and he goes on. See the attitude? That’s human good operating. And that’s why at the end of verse 19 he says just take your hand out, I’ll just forget it, we don’t need that holy stuff here.

And it goes on and describes… 1 Samuel 14:23, finally, “So the LORD saved Israel that day, and the battle passed over unto Beth-aven.” In other words, the Philistines have been put to route. [24] “And the men of Israel were distressed that,” now he does a very dumb thing. One of the principles in warfare that every army is taught and you’re taught this in military science, one of the key principles of war is the principle of pursuit and destruction, that if you ever get the enemy in a position of running you don’t sit there and dawdle away your time; you go after him and destroy him every place you can get him, while you’ve got him running. Principle: If you do not, he will be back to fight with you another day and you will lose more of your men. So you take advantage of the situation.

Now there’s a counter principle to the principle of pursuit and destruction that every commander has to know and that is guarding your lines of communication; obviously if you stretch your line of communication out and he all of a sudden does what the Germans did in the Battle of the Bulge, you’ve got a problem, you get over extended. If you want a good film that’s coming to town, if you want to see something that’s worthwhile, every once in a while we do get one of those films in town, there’s one, The Bridge Too Far, that’s one of the great military disasters in World War II, where General Montgomery decided he was going to take a bridge; it was a good idea, he was going to take the bridge and hold it so that the ground armies could come into that area. He dropped airborne to hold the bridge and the British would have pushed the Germans back and get the bridge over the Rhine in Gaul and they would have had the whole thing. And so they kept plotting which bridge to take out and so on, and they planned on this bridge, and they dropped the airborne in there and the ground armies fouled up and never came to the rescue and the airborne unit was chewed to pieces, and that’s why the name of the book, The Bridge Too Far. It was just a horrible kind of miscalculation that happened.

Well, in this situation Saul does a very similar miscalculation. In 1 Samuel 14:23-24 the armies are running; he’s got an opportunity to apply the principle of pursuit and destruction. Incidentally, another modern illustration of the failure to do this was when General Eric Sharon, who led the Israeli’s over the Suez Canal in 1973, toward the bottom part, and he got over here and he bottled up the Egyptian third army; he had it completely surrounded, and then friend Kissinger came and said hands off. Now what would have been the best thing that he could have done? He had them all… and he was bringing his artillery across the canal, it took them a little time, instead of contacting on the ground, which he was making minimum contact, he was going to stand back there and just lob artillery and just wipe them out. He had them all… he pushed them all down in a nice sector, you couldn’t drop a shell without hitting at least five people and so it would have been very easy, just 24 hours and it would have been all over. But the Russians got upset and we were afraid the Russians might not like that and so we went in and of course, we saved the Egyptian Third Army and now the Israelis someday will pay the horrible price in blood because the Third Army will be back to fight with them on another day.

Well now here’s what happened; “the battle past to Beth-Aven,” it is a route. [24] “The men of Israel,” however, “were distressed.” The problem here is they have been fighting for a long time and they need food. So to carry out the principle of pursuit and destruction logistics is required and in particular simple food supplies. “…for Saul adjured [had solemnly charged] the people,” and here’s why they were hurt. Verse 24 is a summary verse, then the story follows. It’s not written chronologically. He “adjured the people, saying, Cursed be the man that eats any food until evening, until I have been avenged on MY enemies.” Now you see the principle; he’s not following the Lord. That battle has become a battle of personal vengeance for him. So he’s completely abandoned the opportunity and it doesn’t make any difference whether it’s a pressure situation that he’s meeting out of fellowship, or an opportunity situation that he’s also meeting out of fellowship.

Both ways he blows it; the first one, the first time he was pressured; he failed to meet pressure with the faith technique. The next one is prosperity and he fails to meet that by making some dumb order like this: don’t eat, anyone. Now here’s a guy who’s hand to hand fighting, and you imagine carrying a pole around, five pounds, just so, a spear and so on, and you’re running, no armored personnel carriers to take you down the road, your jogging all this time, all night you’re fighting, it’s hand to hand with sword and spear, and then all day and he doesn’t want you to stop for some food. Now he had the food available; that’s the tragedy of the story, the Lord provided the food in a supernatural way and because of an asinine order on Saul’s part, he actually interfered with the Lord’s resistance. Watch this.

1 Samuel 14:25, “And all they of the land came to a wood, and there was honey upon the ground.” Now there’s the Lord’s provision. He had the body go into a place where the army was walking right by the food supply, they didn’t [can’t understand words], the Lord provided it all. [26] “And when the people turned into the wood, behold, the honey dropped,” look at this, that’s the picture, can you imagine you’re starved and you see this honey; one of the quickest sources of glucose imaginable, honey; pre-digested, no stress on your GI system, just reach out and get it, you’ve got glucose which you need in the situation. “…but no man put his hand to his mouth; for the people feared the oath. [27] But Jonathan had not heard what his father charged the other people, therefore, he put forth the end of the rod that was in his hand, and dipped it in an honeycomb, and put his right hand to his mouth; and his eyes were enlightened,” that’s the Hebrew physiology of the Old Testament, depicting how you feel physically by how you act by the bodily organs. [28] “Then answered one of the people and said, Your father straightly charged the people with an oath, saying, Cursed be the man that eats any food.”

Now look at this; this is a case of the disciplined anger of a son on his father. [1 Samuel 14:29] “Then Jonathan said, My father has troubled the land; see, I pray you, how mine eyes have become bright, because I tasted a little of this honey. [30] How much better, if the people had eaten freely today of the spoil of their enemies which thy found! For had there not been a now a much greater slaughter among the Philistines.” See, Jonathan’s got his head screwed on he says look, he says look, you are going to pay in blood tomorrow for this asinine order; these guys are going to be coming up the valley again and then we have to fight them again, kill them now, but we can’t kill them without food. [31] “And they smote the Philistines that day from Michmash to Aijalon; but the people were very faint.” They’re not doing the proper extermination job. [32] And the people flew upon the spoil, and took sheep, and oxen…” what happens down here now, look at this, they’re so frantic for food that when they finally get to some of the resources, then they start eating the meat with the blood. They’re frenzied, they’re so hungry at this point.

1 Samuel 14:33, “Then they told Saul, saying, Behold, the people sin against the LORD, in that they with the blood.” And then he has the gall to talk to his soldiers this way, “You have transgressed…. [34] And Saul said, Disperse yourselves among the people, and say unto them, Bring me here every man his ox, and every man his sheep, and slay them here and eat; and stop sinning against the LORD…,” now he’s a good one to talk about that. [35] And Saul built an altar to the LORD…,” nice of him to do that at this point. [36] “And Saul said, Let us go down after the Philistines by night, and spoil them until the morning light, and let us not leave a man of them….” Of course now they have already regrouped. [37] “And Saul asked counsel of God, Shall I go down after the Philistines?” Now this is the first time the guy dreams of asking counsel of God. Now you see, what is he doing? Trying to get back in fellowship, that’s what’s happening; he’s confessed his sin and now he gets back in fellowship, but what happens. He asks “counsel of God, Shall I go down after the Philistines? Will You deliver them into the hand of Israel. But God didn’t answer him on that day.”

Well, now he knows he’s got sin in the camp, because God isn’t answering him for the same reason God didn’t answer Joshua at Ai. So [38] Saul said, Draw ye near here, all the chief of the people; and know and see wherein this sin has been this day. [39] For, as the LORD lives, who saved Israel, though it be in Jonathan, my son, he shall surely die. But there was not a man among all the people that answered him.” They all loved Jonathan, see nobody’s telling. [40] “Then said he unto all Israel, Be on one side, and I and Jonathan, my son, will be on the other side.” This is lots, to find out who was the guilty one and the Urim and the Thummim of the priest is being used for this; it’s a yes/no answer. “And the people said unto Saul, Do what seems good to you. [41] So Saul said unto the LORD God of Israel, Give a [perfect] lot.” That means I am trusting You with the Urim and the Thummim to come out with a yes/no answer. “And Saul and Jonathan were taken,” that mans the yes came out on their side, the no on the people’s side. [42] And Saul said, Cast lots between me and Jonathan, my son. And Jonathan was taken. [43] Then Saul said to Jonathan, Tell me what you have done. And Jonathan told him, and said, I did but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in mine hand, so I must die. [44] And Saul answered, God do so and more also; for you shall surely die, Jonathan. [45] And the people said unto Saul, Shall Jonathan die, who has wrought this great salvation in Israel? God forbid; as the LORD lives, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground; for he has wrought with God this day. So the people rescued Jonathan, that he died not.”

Now we don’t have time to track the theology, it’s a little complicated here, but let me try to summarize it for you, what happened. The curse upon Jonathan’s life in verse 44 is genuine, and that curse is carried out at the end of the book. Jonathan does die, and he dies with his father in battle, when he could have been saved by going with David. Jonathan finally chose his own destiny, and like a Greek tragedy it plays out in the son and the boy loses his life. The origin, from the divine viewpoint, is that Jonathan here suffered category three suffering. Remember category three suffering; you suffer because you’re suffering in union with a member of your family who’s out of fellowship. And here’s a case in point; the Crown Prince, for that’s what Jonathan is, suffers because his father, who was the king, is out of it.

Now in verse 45 there’s one of those classic passages where some very strong language is used. “God forbid” is not “God forbid,” it’s the Hebrew word chalilah, and it’s translated “we’ll be damned if we’re going to allow this to happen.” That’s what it means. We are not going to permit this sort of thing to happen, so temporarily, and that’s the way you want to read the end of verse 45, temporarily the people rescued Jonathan, so then he didn’t die at that point. The tragedy, militarily, is in the next verse.

1 Samuel 14:46, “Then Saul went up from following the Philistines; and the Philistines went to their own place.” In other words, they escaped. In other words, a vast amount of the Philistine army was saved because a man who operated on human good failed one way to meet the pressures of life that come in upon him, and he got out of fellowship leading them, and he also failed to meet the advantages and the prosperity situations of life.

So while we will go on and see some more failures of Saul and learn, hopefully more lessons, tonight at least we’ve watched two “how-to-do-its” on the negative side of the faith technique. One, adversity; the other, prosperity, and both are equal failures. Remember 1 Corinthians 10:13, “No testing has taken you but such as is common to man, but God is faithful, who will never permit” your perimeter to be broken into unless He has seen fit that you are able to carry that kind of a weight. If we will draw on that kind of an attitude you’ll watch, how in your own life, just little trials, just little ones, if you start applying systematically 1 Corinthians 10:13 you watch the difference in mental attitude happens. It’d be very, very interesting; it’s rather amazing to watch.