1 Samuel 13:8-15 | "The People's King"

Would you open your Bibles with me to 1 Samuel chapter 13, verse 8?

1 Samuel 13:8

If you don't know me, my name is Webb.

I normally sing.

I did sing today, but normally I sing up here.

Normally I plan our services.

And today I get to open the word with you.

And we're in 1 Samuel chapter 13, verse 8.

1 Samuel 13:8

Follow along with me, please, as I read.

He waited seven days, the time appointed by Samuel.

But Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the people were scattering from him.

So Saul said, Bring the burnt offering here to me, and the peace offerings.

And he offered the burnt offering, and as soon as he had finished offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came.

And Saul went out to meet him and greet him.

Samuel said, What have you done?

And Saul said, When I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines had mustered at Mi'kmash, I said, Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the favor of the Lord.

So I forced myself and offered the burnt offering.

And Samuel said to Saul, You have done foolishly.

You have not kept the command of the Lord your God with which he commanded you, for then the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.

But now your kingdom shall not continue.

The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.

And Samuel arose and went up from Gilgal.

The rest of the people went up after Saul to meet the army.

They went up from Gilgal to Gibeah of Benjamin.

Our first reaction, if we're honest, often my first reaction to stories like this one is that this seems a little harsh.

Saul's only doing his best, after all.

Saul's in a tight spot, a rock and a hard place, as it were.

It's the battle his entire dynasty hangs upon.

It's a pivotal moment in Israel's history.

For what would become of Israel if the Philistines wiped out their first king and their first united army in decades?

What would happen?

And so Saul tried.

He waited the seven days, and Samuel was late, and the army was deserting, and what was Saul supposed to do?

Was he supposed to go up to the battle without the sacrifices?

Would God have been pleased with that?

Now, if that's your response, and I must confess at times it's mine, I have bad news for you.

You know very little of the transcendent holiness of God.

You likely have a shallow grasp on his glory.

And worse, I think, as you go on in your Christian life, your Bible will become an increasingly difficult place for you.

For if Saul's condemnation at Gilgal was too severe, then what do we say of the Israelites who died by fiery snake bite in the wilderness?

What do we say of Lot's wife turned to a pillar of salt for looking over her shoulder?

What of Anoniris and set fire?

The death penalty for one lie.

There are countless other examples.

I had to cut this part of my sermon like 16 times.

What of Uzzah, struck dead for touching the ark?

What of Achan?

Forty men died because he coveted the gold of the Canaanites.

What of the sons of Korah?

The earth swallowed them whole.

But maybe to get to the heart of it quickly, to get to the root of it.

All of mankind, all of us, you, me, our kids, our parents, all of us suffer the curse of a fallen world because of one bite from one piece of fruit off of one tree.

Was that too severe on God's part?

You see, what's at stake isn't the outcome.

What God's concerned about isn't the circumstances around it.

This is about obedience to the word of God.

The God who sees the heart, sees beneath Saul's pragmatic excuses.

And when the creator speaks, the creation ought to listen.

My friends, like Job, we have no place to contend with the Almighty.

None.

Neither does Saul.

Because there are no valid reasons.

There are no logical reasons.

There are no rational reasons for disregarding the word of the Most High.

None.

And God has made that crystal clear ever since Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

The real question, the thing that's left unanswered, truthfully, is why wasn't Saul struck dead immediately?

Why wasn't Saul immediately made an example of?

He's the first king.

Why wasn't he set up immediately as an example for all the other kings to learn from?

He deliberately disobeyed the commandment of Samuel in chapter 10.

The prophet of God gave him the word of God and said, Go down before me to Gilgal, and behold, I am coming to you to offer burnt offerings and to sacrifice peace offerings.

Seven days you shall wait until I come to you and show you what you shall do.

Why didn't the hills at Gilgal open up and swallow Saul whole for disregarding the word of the Lord from the prophet of God?

Maybe a better question, friends, isn't what was so wrong with Saul?

But why are we still here?

How can God be so gracious with us?

There's two answers to that question, right?

First, God is patient.

The loving kindness and the graciousness and the mercy of God forbore with Saul, just as he forbears with you.

He doesn't owe you the breath in your lungs.

And so Saul got to keep re breathing for the same reason we do.

God let it.

Look into the perfect law of liberty.

Not forget what we see.

And find hope.

Could you pray with me?

Oh, Father, we ask for your help.

We are weak.

We are frail.

We come to your word and we need your strength to remain humble before it, to hear what you have to say.

Guide us and guard us, we pray, by your Spirit's power, because of the grace bought by your Son.

It's in his name we pray.

Amen.

A line from Abraham Lincoln's world-famous Gettysburg Address sticks out to me as a perfect illustration, and it's just an illustration of what's going on here.

Towards the end of Lincoln's speech, he says, government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

It's his way of describing the American experiment, but I think that Saul, son of Kish, of Gibeah, and Benjamin, he was the people's king.

What are thirty thousand chariots from verse five before the Lord of the heavenly hosts?

What are what are six thousand horsemen?

Are they more terrifying in the walls of Jericho?

Is any army, is any army too great for the God who can halt the sun in the sky?

Now it's worth saying at this point that Samuel might not have actually been late at all.

Commentator disagree about this.

Some say that Samuel had technically until twilight that day.

And others contend that when verse 8 says the time appointed by Samuel, that means that Samuel was in fact late, if only just barely.

But either way, either way, Saul either completely disobeyed or half disobeyed.

And half disobedience is just disobedience, we pretend isn't that bad.

Right?

So even if Samuel was late, even if that still doesn't justify Saul offering the sacrifices himself because Samuel plainly said that it would be Samuel to offer the sacrifices and not Saul.

Not Saul.

Samuel would be the one.

And so, regardless, even regardless of the timing and the specificity of these things, Samuel saw the smoke from behind the next hilltop over.

He was right there.

The armies spread out.

It would not be long, and the text makes it seem like it was very quick.

As soon as the burnt offering goes up, word reaches Saul that Samuel has come to the camp.

They're all waiting.

They all know they're waiting for Samuel to get there.

They're all trembling, verse 7 says, before the might of the Philistines.

Saul had only to wait one more moment.

But don't you see?

This is the exact same sort of impatience.

The exact same sort of impatience of the Israelites in chapter 8 when they demanded king.

Samuel remained a righteous prophet and judge in their midst.

At a time when the word of the Lord was rare in those days, they had Samuel, and though his sons took bribes and perverted justice, just as Eli's sons before them, Israel could not wait for God to raise up another prophet for them like Samuel.

They didn't cry out for one.

They went to Samuel.

Give us a king.

And their impatience for God's timing, and their lack of faith in God's timing, they rejected him as king over Israel.

It's like the alcoholic who thinks I've waited two months for God to take away my cravings, but they're still here.

Or the parent of a wayward child who allows unbelief to take over their heart and says things like, God will never change my son or daughter's heart.

They're hopeless.

Haven't you seen where they are?

Oh my friends, be patient before God's timing and tremble.

Tremble like the nation before the Philistines.

Tremble before you dare to doubt the power of God to save.

He can.

Saul, like Israel, like you and I, is found to be impatient.

It's found to be faithless before God's timing.

Verse 9.

And so Saul said, Bring the burnt offering here to me and the peace offerings.

And he offered the burnt offering.

And as soon as he'd finished offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came.

Notice, no peace offering yet, just one of the two.

Behold, Samuel came.

And Saul went out to meet him and greet him.

And Samuel said, What have you done?

And Saul said, When I saw the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, that the Philistines had mustered it, Mi'kmash.

You see, Saul thinks he knows what God wants.

Saul thinks he can make his case.

Saul thinks he knows the right thing to do, and Saul thinks he can take care of it, so he takes matters into his own hands and he gets the job done.

And he lets pragmatism trump obedience.

We see that Saul is pragmatic.

He's faithless in God's design.

He doesn't believe in God's way of doing things.

It's like for some ridiculous reason Saul thought that somehow Samuel's tardiness justified his disobedience.

Somehow the situation at hand was so bad that he no longer had to obey.

It's as if God didn't know that the army would tremble before the might of the Philistines when he told Saul to wait for Samuel.

Of course God knew.

And so Saul thinks, surely God doesn't want the people to go AWOL and desert the army.

Surely God doesn't want me to go into battle without first offering the sacrifices.

And so, because Samuel isn't stepping up and doing his job, I'll do it.

I'll disobey the Lord.

One commentator writes, it is ironic and symptomatic of Saul's spiritual dullness.

That the king believed he could obtain the Lord's favor through the sacrifices, right?

He believed he could obtain the Lord's favor through an act of disobedience.

You see, Saul presumed to know the mind of God well enough to permit him to disobey God.

And then he thought God would be happy with him.

The elders of Israel said, God doesn't want Samuel's sons to be judges over Israel.

They pervert justice and take bribes.

So we'll take care of this.

We'll take care of this for God.

Samuel, give us a king.

It's like when people say what God really wants is loving, committed, faithful marriages between two people who care deeply about each other.

And so it doesn't matter who I marry, as long as I love them.

It's like what people say when God, what God really wants is Christian worship from a full heart.

And so we'll sing songs that cause our hearts to soar.

Instead of songs that teach deep, rich, challenging theological truths that cause the word of Christ to dwell in us richly until after that, then our hearts soar.

Do we really think, like Saul does, that such corner cutting is what God wants?

Do we really think that God wants us to be happy more than he wants us to be holy, fully devoted and set apart for himself?

What is happiness, after all, without holiness?

What is it to belong to the Lord without being holy unto him?

It's like when we say or think, and I do this all the time, that what God really wants is for people to come to repentance, not to come to churches, and so we'll share the gospel with them, going soft on the sin and wrath of God part, and then we'll do it without being too churchy about it or bringing them into the body of Christ for lasting discipleship, because people don't want to come to church, but they might they might pray.

Don't you know that teaching somebody the scriptures isn't fast enough?

We say, in effect, the Philistines are lining up their chariots out there and people are dying.

Forget gospel-rich discipleship that makes disciples based upon the whole counsel of God, teaching them to obey everything that our Lord has commanded them.

Forget that.

That's too slow.

We want to see sinners saved, we say.

So does God.

I promise you.

God wants to see sinners saved far more than you do.

Far more than I do.

He cares about it.

He's told us the right way to do it.

For Saul, it was always going to take a miracle.

It was always going to take a miracle to defeat the Philistines.

He could not have done it on his own.

At best, Saul had 3,000 soldiers, and the Philistines have 30,000 chariots.

This is out of balance of a biblical proportion, right?

Saul needed God to do this.

And right here, right now, Saul just switched sides.

Saul, just like the people in verses 6 and 7, he hides in the caves and the tombs of his own wisdom.

He chose his own way because he didn't believe that God's way was good enough or fast enough.

And so God is no longer on Saul's team because Saul is no longer on God's team.

Saul took a shortcut.

Saul tried to get God's outcome without going God's way.

Saul tried to cheat God.

And Saul, like Israel, like you and I, was found to be faithless before God's designs, before God's way of doing things.

And then he gets caught.

And then Saul gets called out.

Samuel says, What have you done?

And the Hebrew here is emphatic.

This isn't a grandpa named Samuel showing up and saying, Now, what have you done to me?

No.

Or Sali, I suppose I should say.

This is emphatic.

What have you done?

And what does Saul do?

He blubbers.

He just lathers on all the excuses.

He says, I knew I shouldn't have Samuel.

I had to force myself to do it.

But don't you see that I just I had to?

Do you see the pride?

Do you hear the arrogance behind the charade?

Saul says to Samuel, in effect, it wasn't my fault.

There's no repentance in this man.

Not a scrap.

The irony just screams off the page here.

How can a man who clearly knew he was supposed to wait seven days, the time appointed by Samuel?

How can a man who knew that so much he waited for seven days claim it wasn't his fault when he disobeyed?

What do you mean, Saul?

What do we mean?

Clearly, we know better.

Clearly, we know better.

And Israel is the same way.

When Samuel makes plain to them their foolishness and asking for a king in chapter 12, what does Israel do?

Turn with me back to chapter 12, verse 17.

Is not the wheat harvest today?

Samuel says, I will call upon the Lord that he may send thunder and rain.

It's bad news for a wheat harvest.

Bad news.

And you shall know and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in the sight of the Lord in asking for yourselves a king.

So Samuel called upon the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day, and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel.

And all the people said to Samuel, Pray for your servants for the Lord your God.

It's not like Pharaoh.

Pray for your servants for the Lord your God that we may not die.

For we have added to all our sins this evil to ask for ourselves a king.

Notice what they don't do.

Notice what they don't do.

They don't ask God to remove their king.

They don't beg Samuel to restrain their king.

They only fear for their own necks.

Fear, they grieve, only for what it will cost them, not how great an injustice they've done to their God.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 9, as it is, I rejoice not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting.

2 Corinthians 7:9

For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us, for godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret.

Whereas worldly grief, worldly grief produces death.

Israel was grieved for fear at best that they'd lose their lives, and at worst that their crops would be destroyed.

At worst, they only cared about the harvest.

Saul was grieved only that he got caught.

He does not even know the consequences yet.

He has no clue.

He has no clue.

He's just blubberingly defiant and pathetically arrogant.

He got caught.

Do we not do the same thing, beloved?

What troubles you more?

What troubles you more?

Transgressing against a loving God or a wrathful God?

What troubles you more?

The thought that your salvation might not be genuine when you sin?

Are you more troubled that your assurance is weakened when you sin, or are you more troubled at the horror, the dread of ever adding any more to the cross of Christ?

Is your heart broken because you've sinned against a God who loves you?

Or is your heart broken because you've realized you're not who you think you are?

We do the same thing.

You see, when our when we're only grieved by the consequences or implications for ourselves, our grief is this selfish, inward, self-consumed, worldly thing.

We become obsessed with these me sentences about our foolishness.

We say things like, I can't believe I've done this.

I should have known better.

I'm, you really, you must know I'm better than this.

I'll do better next time.

I'll do better next time.

I'll do better next time.

Do you hear the pride?

It's just about me in those sentences.

Judas, fat Judas, said, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood, as he threw the thirty pieces of silver back.

And then he went off and drowned himself in arrogant self-loathing.

Notice too, you students of the word, Saul will come to the exact same end.

There's no repentance in this man.

He does not believe God can forgive him because he does not know the character of God.

Because he hasn't realized that he's still breathing.

So there must be mercy with this God.

Saul, like you and like me, like the nation, failed to reckon with the gravity of the situation.

Because he failed to reckon with the holiness of God.

And he failed to reckon with God's merciful covenant faithfulness that endures forever.

Forever.

You see, Saul didn't love God.

Saul did not love God because he loved himself far too much for that.

He was too proud.

And Saul was found to be faithless before the character of God.

He was a king of the people.

He was just like them.

And so are we.

The next one, by the people, goes a little quicker.

Saul is the king they asked for, remember?

Chapter 8, verses 1 through 9, it's this whole discourse, and they say, Appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.

Samuel, he's the king the people asked for, but not only that, not only that, he's exactly the kind of king they wanted.

Handsome and tall.

Saul looked like a king.

When they saw him for the first time, hiding in the baggage, like Saul on a like Jonah on a boat to Tarshish, fleeing from the will of God, resisting God's will.

When they saw their king hiding in the baggage, they rush to him and they throw him up on their shoulders and they chant, Long live the king! Long live the king.

He's a king the people approved of.

And finally, Saul rules exactly how they wanted him to.

Because shortcutting God's commands to get the job done is exactly what this people would have done.

You see, when Saul foolishly casts aside the commandment of the Lord, he submits no longer to the word of God, but to the will of the people.

They're all trembling, they're all hiding in caves, they're all fleeing.

He submits to the will of the people, and the king of Israel rejected Yahweh as king over Israel just as the people did.

They built the throne, they put him on, they celebrated his foreign policy.

Not only was Saul a king just like them, he was the king they wanted.

But in God's wisdom, matchless insight, Saul was exactly the king they needed.

Saul was given to the Israelites for the Israelites.

He was given for their discipline because Saul's anointing was for their correction.

Like the judges before him, like all the judges before him, Saul was raised up with a particular purpose in mind.

He's just like the judges.

Even his anointing, even his anointing is just like the judges.

In chapter 9.

In chapter 9, now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel, tomorrow, about this time, I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel.

He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines.

For I've seen my people because their cry has come to me.

When Samuel saw Saul, the Lord told him, Here is the man of whom I spoke to you.

He it is who shall restrain my people.

This is just like the judges in chapter 8, Samuel tells the nation, When Jacob went into Egypt and the Egyptians oppressed them, then your fathers cried out to the Lord.

And the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, who brought your fathers out of Egypt and made them dwell in this place.

But they forgot the Lord their God, right?

Last week with Anton, they abandoned him, they forsook him, and he stole them into the hand of Sisera, commander of the army of Hazor, into the hand of the Philistines, into the hand of the king of the Mo, and into the hand of the king of Moab.

And they fought against them, and they cried out to the Lord and said, We have sinned because we have forsaken the Lord and have served the Baals and the Ashkeroth.

But now deliver us, save us out of the hand of our enemies, that we may serve you.

And the Lord sent Jerubel, this is still Samuel speaking, and the Lord sent Jerubel and Barak and Jephah and Samuel and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and you lived in safety.

The Philistines, Moabites, Midianites, Sisera himself were raised up against the nation as judgment and discipline for their sins of idolatry.

It's like Anton showed us last week in Judges chapter 2.

Judges 2 · chapter mention

And just like them, just like the judges, Saul was raised up to save, to deliver, to Yeshua, the people, from the hand of the Philistines.

He's just like the Judges.

In chapter 10 and chapter 11, the Spirit of God rushes upon Saul, just like it did on Samson.

And after the Spirit rushes upon him in chapter 11, Saul butchers two oxen, chops them up, and sends them throughout the nation as a coercive threat.

Anybody who doesn't come out to fight with me, thus will I do to his oxen, Saul says.

This king is a tyrant.

And he's just exactly like a certain Levite from the hill country with his concubine in that horribly dark day in the book of Judges.

He's just like the judges.

But notice, Saul wasn't even a good judge.

He wasn't even a good judge.

When Gideon's army dwindled down to 300 against all of Midian, did Gideon test aside the favor of God?

No.

Did Samson seek out empty ritualism?

Try to perform the sacrifices in an unholy way when he was tied to a post in a Philistine temple?

No.

Did Saul run headlong and faithful into battle like Barak and Deborah?

No, of course not.

These judges that Samuel lists are the same judges the author of the Hebrews lists.

The judges had faith.

No.

Saul wasn't even a good judge.

Saul, the people's king, the king just liked them, the king they wanted.

Saul was God's discipline upon the nation because as God, the same way that God rose up foreign oppressors like the Philistines or the Midianites, God raised up for the nation a foolish king.

And God does the same for us.

You see, when when God gave Israel the king they asked for, gave them over to their own way.

You want a king?

Here have one.

Saul was disciplined from God, and he does the same today.

Romans 1 and Ephesians 4 tell us this, right?

They make it plain that when sinners sin, God hands them over to a darkened mind and a calloused spirit.

They get what they want.

He lets them be who they're trying to be.

You want to be a nation like all the nations?

Here's a king, like the king of the nations.

And God, when he does that, he separates himself from sinners because sinners have alienated themselves from him, and this spiral leads to death.

Leads to death because they've alienated themselves from the giver of life.

And Saul himself, not only was he disciplined for the people, he received a discipline himself from the Lord in verse 14.

And just as Israel lost out on God as their king when Saul became their king, so Saul lost out on God as his king.

When Saul decided to be a king unto himself.

In a day when the word was rare.

And the favor of the Lord, the favor of the Lord no less.

Also walked away with Samuel.

Because he didn't finish the sacrifices.

Saul resorted to his own devices.

And Saul was left to his own devices.

So my friends, here we have it.

Hope you see how this whole thing goes.

Saul was faithless.

And then he was fearful.

And as he feared, he grew anxious and fretful, and in his anxiety he acted foolishly, and in his foolishness he gave up.

He forfeited his God.

Like Esau, his birthright for a bowl of soup.

Saul gives up the kingdom.

A small thing faith seems.

But from it grows such great and terrible things.

Do you not see how faithlessness in the God of heaven leads only to death?

This is a dark, dark day in Israel.

Because now not only are the people faithless, now they are led by a faithless king.

And Saul is only the beginning.

Eventually, this progression of stiff-necked and rebellious people led by stiff-necked and rebellious kings who scorn and kill the prophets as they reject God's word.

This leads not only to Philistine oppression, but Babylonian exile.

Eventually, not only would Saul lose the kingdom, the nation would lose the kingdom.

And such judgment is just.

For God was rejected by them long before they were rejected by God.

And much the same is true with hell, my friends.

Nobody, nobody ever undergoes God's judgment ignorantly.

Everybody in eternal fire knew God.

Refused to give him thanks or honor him as God.

Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

I promise I'm not making that up.

If it was up to me, I wouldn't have made it up.

That's what the word says.

But in this passage, in this passage, the mercy of God breaks through.

Do you see it?

Do you see it?

There can be no hope for Israel.

There can be no hope for this faithless people led by a faithless king.

There can be no hope unless God seeks out a man after his own heart and commands him to be prince over his people.

David.

David is who the text is hinting at.

David would be a wholly different sort of king.

For when David was faithless after being confronted by the prophets for his folly, David would repent.

We have these beautiful Psalms of David's repentance.

David, unlike Saul, would recognize God as the king over Israel.

But David is still foolish.

Don't misunderstand me.

David still forgets his God.

David still acts like a king unto himself from time to time.

He takes whatever women he pleases and he glories in the might and strength of his army as if that little shepherd boy earned it.

Even David could not be the hopes and fears of all the years.

Even David could not be the true king after God's own heart, but thanks be to God, you and I know the rest of the story that God has sought out yet another man after his own heart to be king over his people.

This king will be faithful.

Think with me now of the David of the New Testament, the righteous and rightful king of Israel, Jesus of Nazareth, our Emmanuel, God with us, Yahweh in Israelite flesh, the king after God's own heart, the true people's king is of the people, by the people, and for the people, because in that Israelite flesh, Jesus the God man, truly God and truly man, the incarnate Christ, truly was more than Saul ever was, a king of the people who could sympathize with their weaknesses.

And this was God's will.

This is the kind of king God wants for his people.

Hebrews says, therefore, Jesus had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

The king of the people, the people's king, was made just like them in every respect, yet without sin.

By the people, Saul was put on a throne crafted by the will of the nation, crowned with their cheering approval and lifted up, lifted up on their shoulders with glad shouts.

But at the coronation of Jesus Christ, he would have a crown of thorns twisted together by a Gentile nation raised up against Israel.

At the coronation of Jesus, he would be exalted on a throne made with Roman wood and nails.

At the coronation of Jesus, the king of the people would be lifted up to shouts of crucify him.

Crucify him, they said.

The hymn writer writes, Now see the king who wears a crown, one made of shame and splinters, the sacrifice for ruined man, the substitute for sinners, as earth is stained with royal blood and quakes with love and fury.

He breathes his last and bows his head, the king in all his beauty.

Love that hymn.

Someday we'll sing it.

Bows his head.

His head was not lifted up.

While Saul represented the handing of Israel over to their sins, the people's king, after God's own heart, was handed over to Israel for their salvation from the wrath of God on their sins.

The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life, give his very self as a ransom for many.

He was given for the people.

He is the handed over King.

No one takes my life from me, Jesus says, but I lay it down of my own accord.

In the garden, Christ would say to his disciples, see, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is handed over, handed over into the hands of sinners.

So Jesus' words.

When Satan tempted Jesus to doubt God's timing, to doubt God's character, to doubt God's designs, by promising him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory, saying, These I will give you if you fall down and worship me, Satan says.

And in the wilderness, Satan promised Jesus the kingdoms without the cross.

It was just like the day he offered Saul the sacrifices without Samuel.

But when Satan offered the new king of Israel, the same shortcuts that he offered Saul, what does Jesus do?

It's incredible.

Jesus affirms that Yahweh is the only king that Jesus will serve.

Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

Then Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan.

For it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.

Serve him like a king, and the king serves somebody.

Jesus, the faithful king after God's own heart, the true king of the people, acknowledges a king above him, in a way that Saul never could.

Jesus acknowledges that this king, he will worship and serve at all costs, even the cost of death on a cross.

And so we find where Saul was faithless, Jesus of Nazareth was faithful, where Saul was fearful and afraid of the Philistines and their chariots, Jesus was fearless before the cross and the very wrath of God.

He set his face like flint.

Where Saul was anxious and nervous and fretful and wringing his hands about when Samuel would get there, Jesus was fretless.

He went 40 days in the wilderness with no food, and he faced Satan with the word of God in hand.

At peace, utterly confident in the will of God, where Saul was foolish in his disobedience, rejecting the command of God from the Word of God, which is always a foolish thing to do.

Always.

And when Saul forfeited his relationship with God as the first king over God's people, where Saul forfeited that relationship by his disobedience, Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God with whom Yahweh is well pleased.

So much more than Saul.

It's nothing like him.

Or Saul's disobedience lost him the kingdom.

The obedience of Jesus Christ, obedience even to the point of death on a cross.

For that obedience, God has highly exalted him, highly exalted Jesus and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.

The king who bowed before Yahweh, every knee shall bow before him.

Where Saul forfeited the kingdom in his exaltation.

Jesus receives an inheritance of nations.

He gets them all.

He gets what Satan promised.

God's way.

From the law and the prophet, the whole of the Old Testament, Jesus had the word of God of the promised messianic hope to bear.

And he did so perfectly.

Every peace was fulfilled.

And you and I, you and I have the prophetic word more fully confirmed.

We have the good news that there is finally such a king.

All that remains for you is to bow before him.

Will you humble yourself before the rightful king of all the nations?

Because in his kingdom there is rest for your souls.

The prophets said to the nation of Israel, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a cult, the foal, the beast of burden.

Matthew would later quote that at the triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

But will you, at the coming of your king, like David and Jesus, humble yourself?

Or will you reject the only rightful king to seek for yourself a king of your own making, like Saul and Israel did?

At his coming, will you shrink back, blubber on your excuses?

Or will you rejoice?

Will you be glad with loud shouts of Hosanna in the highest?

Glory be to Christ.

Give him the crown, give him the throne.

How will you respond at the coming of the king?

At the coming of the true people's king, after God's own heart.

Will you be glad?

Or will you fear and tremble?

Let's pray.

Oh Lord God, we praise you for the gift of your Son.

Surely there is no one like him in all the earth.

Father, what glory belongs to Jesus?

What glory belongs to Jesus, whose faithfulness and righteousness and obedience is so great and so perfect that the nations may rest upon it.

Oh Lord, it's in him and him alone we boast.

It's in his holy and righteous life and death, his triumphant resurrection, his exalted ascension.

It's in him and him alone we glory.

He is the king.

He is the king.

Not I.

Oh Father, hold us fast with this truth.

Bind us with it by the power of your spirit.

For the saying is trustworthy.

If we have died with him, we will also live with him.

If we endure, we will also reign.

Reign with him.

If we deny him, he also will deny us, and if we are faithless, he remains faithful.

For he cannot deny himself.

Oh Lord, may Jesus never be denied the glory to his name for all that he has done.

Long live the King unto eternity.

It's in his name we pray.

Amen.