Saul the bad - 1 Samuel - with James Thackeray

Welcome to the Grace Church Weekly Podcast. We're an international church right

in the heart of Stockholm, Sweden.

Each week, we share a message that's rooted in the faithful teaching of God's

Word and open to the vibrant work of the Holy Spirit among His people.

Here's this week's message.

We're looking today at saw a bad.

Obviously, in Hollywood or on our favorite TV series, the redemption arc is

often our favorite thing to watch.

Maybe if you remember all the way back to Star Wars when Darth Vader kind of became a good guy.

Sorry if that's a spoiler, but if you haven't seen it by now, that's your fault.

We love it when the bad guy kind of becomes a good guy.

This often happens in sports. You know, somebody, they missed a penalty in last

year's final, and this year they score the winner.

The villain becoming the hero is one of my favorite stories.

But unfortunately, in 1 Samuel, it's very much the other way around.

Really, 1 Samuel is the opposite of a redemption on, if this is about Saul going from hero to villain.

So last week we saw the reluctant king. We saw Saul hiding in the baggage,

but then rising up to become this decisive leader, routing the Philistines and taking control,

following the Lord and leading Israel.

Just remember, we said at the time, Israel was very much sort of disparate tribes,

separate groups, not really united. and they were crying out for a king to lead them.

How rejecting God's leadership and asking for a king. And Saul had got off to a great start.

By the end of this book, by the end of 1 Samuel, we see Saul surrounded by enemies

and we see him taking his own life.

And chapter 13 that Ruan read for us actually marks the start of the downfall of Saul.

So today we're going to fly through chapters 13 to 31.

So do have your fingers ready to flick. we're going to see the downfall of Saul.

We're going to see five key incidents in Saul's life and what we can learn from them ourselves.

So the first thing we saw in these chapters, these verses that Ruan read,

we see a disobedient king.

Now, first, we sort of look at this and think, well, what did he do wrong?

What is Samuel so annoyed about?

We actually have to go back to 1 Samuel 10.

You see, Samuel was the prophet. He was kind of the interceder between the kingdom

of Israel and God. He was God's voice on earth.

And he'd said very clearly to Saul some days before, he told Saul what was going

to happen, that Saul was going to become king.

And he said, then you will go down before me to Gilgal. and behold,

I'm going to come down to you to offer burnt offerings and peace offerings.

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

So in verse eight, where it talks about Saul waited seven days,

the time set by Samuel, this wasn't some arbitrary thing. Samuel had said, I will be there.

I will turn up after seven days.

And it seems like Saul got so impatient.

He wanted to do these burnt offerings himself he wanted to do the sacrifices himself.

He didn't trust Samuel. He didn't trust God. He ignored all the rules and regulations

there were around these offerings.

And we see there are consequences.

Samuel says in verse 13, you have acted foolishly. You have not kept the command

the Lord your God gave you.

And there will be consequences your kingdom will not endure.

From this moment on, it seems Saul was on a very slippery slope.

What seems like a mild bit of disobedience was actually quite serious.

It seems to be in the start of this fall from grace.

Second thing we're going to see, if we had a disobedient king,

we're going to see a foolish king.

So if we just flick over into chapter 14, and one of the main characters of

Samuel is Saul's son, Jonathan. them.

The book is mainly about Samuel, Saul, Jonathan, and David.

And Jonathan is Saul's son. And again, he really takes it to the Philistines,

one of Israel's enemies that were surrounding them.

And he leads them in a real victory.

But then we have this strange account in the middle of chapter 14.

In verse 24, it says, and the men of Israel had been hard pressed that day.

So Saul had laid an oath on the people, saying, Cursed be the man who eats food

until it is evening, and I am avenged on my enemies.

So none of the people had tasted food.

Now when all the people came to the forest, behold, there was honey on the ground.

And when the people entered the forest, the honey was dropping,

but no one put his hand to his mouth, for the people feared Saul's oath.

But Jonathan had not heard his father charge the people with the oath,

So he put the tip of the staff in the honeycomb and put his hand to his mouth

and his eyes became bright.

Then one of the people said, your father strictly charged the people with an

oath saying, cursed be the man who eats food this day.

Then Jonathan says, my father's troubled the land. See how my eyes have become

bright because I tasted a little of this honey.

How much better if the people had eaten freely today.

So again, it seems at first glance It's like such a little thing.

And Saul makes this sort of hot-headed oath.

Nobody's going to eat until I've got revenge on my enemies.

This was a serious thing. An oath was kind of basically saying, God is the witness.

You're bound by the Lord to this. And it was such a foolish thing to do.

I mentioned I was having a bit of a sugar crunch. We all know the effects of sugar.

A little bit of honey would probably sort me right out. But these men were going into battle.

They were fighting the enemies of Israel.

And their leader says, but don't eat anything. It's just foolish.

And as the story kind of goes on, Saul actually doubles down on his foolishness.

Jonathan, his son, eats the honey. He doesn't know about this oath.

But then later on, Saul finds out about it.

He accuses, says to Jonathan, tell me what you've done.

Because I swore this oath. Jonathan said, I had a little bit of honey.

Saul is actually determined to kill his own son for breaking his own foolish oath.

Thankfully, some of his men intervene. They say, Jonathan shouldn't die.

Don't be crazy. Don't be crazy.

But as well as seeing in the previous chapter of disobedient king, we see a foolish king.

King making these crazy decisions, putting himself first above others.

So we've had a disobedient king. We've had a foolish king.

Then we move on, chapter 15, we see a proud king.

A chapter 15 is one of those, it's a tough read. It's a tough Old Testament passage.

Samuel brings a message from the Lord, which is basically this,

it's time to wipe out the Amalekites.

He says, kill them all, kill the old, kill the young, kill the animals,

wipe them off the face of the earth.

It's a tough read. We need to remember the Amalekites had some fairly detestable practices.

They worshipped a god called Moloch, and part of that worship involved sacrificing children.

Maybe remember last week, they had an Israelite village surrounded,

and the leader of the Amalekites said, yeah, we'll do a peace treaty with you

if every single person gouges out their right eye.

These were not nice people. These were not cozy neighbors. that suddenly Samuel

and God decided, ah, let's just wipe them out.

They'd had many chances, many chances to live, to turn away from these detestable practices.

But they refused. So Saul was to enact God's justice.

God is a God of mercy and compassion. He's also God of justice.

And at this time, his justice was very much to be exercised on earth.

But as we read through the passage, Saul sort of does some of it. He summons his army.

He attacks. He defeats the Amalekites.

But he keeps the king alive. He keeps a bunch of the sheep and the cattle alive.

Samuel had been very clear. He doesn't just say, go and attack them and destroy.

He says, do not spare them.

Cut to death everything, everyone.

Saul starts off, he's really pleased with himself. In verse 13,

when he meets Samuel, Saul says, the Lord bless you.

I've carried out the Lord's instructions.

Samuel goes, hang on, wait a minute. If you've killed all the sheep,

how can I still hear them? What's the cattle I can hear?

Saul tries to justify his actions.

Even when Samuel points out what he's done wrong. He keeps on arguing it.

He then tries to shift the blame. He says, oh, the soldiers brought them from the Alakites.

And we decided to sacrifice to God.

And even by the very end, he kind of asks for forgiveness, but he sort of points

out, it really wasn't my fault.

I was afraid of the soldiers.

It seems quite clear in these verses that Saul is proud.

Saul is putting himself ahead of the Lord. He's putting himself ahead of Samuel, God's mouthpiece.

And at this point, Samuel tells him in verse 28, the Lord has torn the kingdom

of Israel from you today and has given it to one of your neighbors.

Saul's pride, this seems clear.

Saul's pride leaves him being rejected by Samuel, being rejected by God.

Unfortunately this isn't the turning point where Saul realizes what have I done,

I've turned from God so much that he's going to take my kingdom away,

it keeps on going because of course this brings David into the scene this brings

the eventual King David into focus.

So after seeing a disobedient king, a foolish king, a proud king,

through most of the rest of Samuel, we see a jealous king.

Because in the next chapter, Samuel goes off. He finds David. He anoints him.

He is the one the Lord has appointed.

Shortly after that, we have the account of David and Goliath.

Are we all familiar with that? We're going to preach through David's life at

some point, so I won't go into too much detail.

But David bursts on the scene, and he kind of bails Saul out.

Saul's in this situation where he needs a champion. They're all terrified of Goliath.

David comes onto the scene.

And for a while, David seems to be in good relations with Saul.

But it doesn't take Saul long to realize David is a threat. David is the one

who will take his kingdom.

People start singing. It tells us that Saul has slain his thousands,

but David is tens of thousands.

I guess hands were a little bit different in those days.

But this really upsets Saul, really upsets Saul.

David has become kind of part military commander, part kind of chill-out counselor.

He's playing the heart for Saul.

Saul tries to kill him. Saul gets enraged. He says twice he tries to pin David

to the wall with his spear. Poor old David.

He's bailed out Saul. He's just there trying to bring a bit of mellow moods,

creates some ambience and the king throws a spirit in twice,

twice in chapter 18 and then once again in chapter 19, Saul tries to kill David.

He tries to kill the Lord's anointed.

And perhaps you could write that off just a bit of some jealous rage,

some spur of the moment anger.

But even after David flees Saul, even after Saul's own son Jonathan tries to

intercede for him, Saul carries on trying to kill him.

David escapes, Saul sends men after David, and a lot of the rest of Samuel is

spent with basically Saul chasing David around, trying to kill him.

And remember, Saul knows that David is the Lord's anointed.

So not only is he trying to kill David, he's rejecting God.

So we've seen a disobedient king, we've seen a foolish king,

we've seen a proud king, a jealous king.

And unfortunately, Saul goes even further.

Although David escapes, there's some fairly significant collateral damage in chapters 21 and 22.

So at one point, David is fleeing.

He's fleeing from Saul's men. And he takes a bit of refuge with a priest called Ahimelech.

And there were sort of, I think, 85 priests with him at this place called Nob,

David takes refuge. Saul finds out about it. Saul goes there. He interrogates them.

There's a guy called Doeg the Edomite who kind of snitches on the priests.

Even though Ahimelech says to him, who among all your servants is so faithful as David?

He points out he's a priest. He's inquired after the Lord.

He said, David's one of the good guys. Surely this is the turning point.

Surely this is where Saul turns back, relents on his anger, relents on his jealousy.

But he doesn't. Saul says, you shall surely die, you and all your father's hands.

That day Saul kills, or has killed, not only the priest, not only Ahimelech,

but 85 other priests in the household.

He's gone from being a jealous king to a murderous king.

It's quite the fall, isn't it? It's quite a dramatic fall from this brave leader

from last week to this murderous king.

There seems to be rock bottom for Saul.

But again, there's no rise from here. There's no happy ending, I'm afraid, for Saul.

Saul continues to chase David.

Twice. He kind of has David cornered, but David turns the table.

David has Saul in his hands and spares his life.

There's those beautiful moments where David, he takes a little cut from the

corner of Saul's robe and then goes far away and basically says, who am I?

I am nobody. You are the king.

You were anointed. I could have killed you, but I didn't. And I feel guilty

even for cutting a corner off your own.

And for a brief moment, Saul is tanned. Saul realizes what he's done.

But it doesn't seem long. He's back again.

He chases David again. He does not relent from this course at any point.

And I say, eventually, the whole book of Samuel ends with Saul dead by his own

hands, surrounded by his enemies.

This great king who started so well, the first king of Israel.

Seemingly a great leader, a powerful, well-respected, well-liked man.

Just gets caught with disobedience, with foolishness, with jealousy, pride, and murder.

At every point that he has a chance to turn away, it seems he doubles down. He makes things worse.

It's a rather depressing 18 chapters I'm sorry if it's been a rather depressing

sermon what can we learn? what can we learn from Saul today?

I think there's two really important things we need to learn today I think the

first thing is to guard your heart because whilst probably none of us have been at this murderous point,

We've all been at disobedience We've all been at foolishness We've all been at jealousy At pride,

And there's a constant theme in all these five points that Saul got to.

That's he put himself first.

Think right back to that initial passage that we read.

He put himself in the place of Samuel. He put himself in the place of God.

Throughout all these accounts, the constant refrain is that Saul puts Saul first rather than the Lord.

If you get a sniff that you're doing that, if you get a hint that your regular

state is to put yourself before the Lord, this is your chance to repent.

This is your chance to change. This is your chance to make a choice.

There are so many points in that account I saw where he could have realized,

could have realized he was turning further and further away from God.

We know we have a loving Heavenly Father who welcomes us back with open arms.

But I don't think Saul ever truly repented. I think the only time he asked for

forgiveness, there was a kind of, forgive me, it was not really my fault.

And true repentance involves a change. We saw no real change in Saul.

So if you feel you've maybe turned away from the Lord, if you've put yourself before him.

Guard your heart from going further. Guard your heart from doubling down and

working through the stages.

Come to the Lord in true repentance.

Just as a little aside, I hope you take some time to read through these chapters.

And you'll come across something a few times that might give you pause for thought.

So a few times it mentions something about, something like, the evil spirit

from the Lord came on Saul. It mentions three times.

One of those times is immediately before Saul tries to pin David to the war.

It says, the next day an evil spirit from God came forcefully upon Saul,

And be very careful as you read that Not to think that you can be sat there,

everything will be perfectly fine,

You've been really close to the Lord You've been having fellowship,

reading the Bible, praying, doing all the right things And suddenly God goes,

evil spirit And the next thing you know, you're throwing spears at somebody,

It doesn't happen like that.

Scholars seem to agree that this is more that God allows these things,

a little bit like he did with Job.

He allows things to happen, sometimes to test our character,

to expose what's in our heart.

But at this point, Saul had a choice.

Saul had a choice to not throw a spear at David, to not allow his inner brooding,

his intrusive thoughts, as I believe they're called sometimes.

You had a choice to not act on them.

We have that. We're not helpless in this. We have a choice to turn to God.

In those situations where we know we can either keep on moving away from the

Lord or we go, enough is enough, and come back to the Lord. We have a choice.

We either act on them we can turn to God.

Guard your heart. Guard your heart.

History is full of people who started well.

And there are many people who finish well, who finish strongly.

It's all didn't. It's all finished really badly.

See, David, We're going to come to David And if you're familiar with the story

of David He was far from perfect David did some shocking things.

He committed adultery With one of his best friend's wife And to cover it up

Had his best friend killed,

but David turned his heart back to the Lord.

David didn't double down on it. David came in true and genuine repentance.

So we mustn't think that maybe we've sinned or we've been struggling with the

same sin for some time. We mustn't think, well, that's it.

We're down that path. There's no coming back. We have a loving,

forgiving, heavenly father.

We can come to him in true and genuine repentance, but guard your heart.

Guard your heart against these things that did for Saul.

Second and final thing we can learn, and that's look to the true king.

See, there's a king who came after Saul.

Where Saul was disobedient, this king was obedient, even to the point of death.

Where Saul was foolish, this king was wise beyond anything that came before or after.

Where Saul was proud and jealous this king was humble.

And where Saul was murderous this king gave life.

Of course I'm not talking about David. I'm talking about a descendant of David.

Thousands or some hundreds of years after The descendant of David came to earth,

Jesus Christ, Cain, the body of a man, fully God and fully man.

This is written about him.

Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ,

if any comfort from his love, any common sharing in the spirit,

any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded,

having the same love, being one spirit and of one mind.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility,

value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests,

but each view to the interests of others.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus,

who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something

to be used to his own advantage.

Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of assertion,

being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself by being obedient to death, even death on a cross.

The true king, the eternal king, Jesus Christ, he's our ultimate example, isn't he?

You know, a lot of things that I kind of sort of grew up with that went out

of fashion, they're coming back in, which is great news for me.

Like double denim, that's back.

But what I hope will come back, people used to wear those things,

didn't they? Said, W-W-J-E-D.

What would Jesus do?

Such a simple thing. Everyone used to wear them for a while.

You had them on your guitar.

What would Jesus do?

So Saul is a cautionary tale.

But I wouldn't really recommend looking to Saul and going, I don't want to be

like him. on your heart against all kinds of sin, against all kinds of temptation.

But look to Jesus. Look to the true king.

I look out. I sound really old now. Nearly all of you are younger than me.

Straight over my friend Mike, because he's a few more older than me then.

But most of you are at the start of your walk.

You're in the fairly early days. You've got more of your Christian life ahead of you than behind you.

And I would really encourage you all to consider at every point what would.

Jesus do it's nothing new say this was big in the 80s,

maybe you're at a high point in your walk you're feeling really enthusiastic

you're feeling really encouraged that's fantastic keep on guarding your heart

keep on looking to the true king,

or maybe you've had your first wobble,

maybe you've had your first moment as a Christian where you find it hard to

obey Temptation's too strong.

Disobedience is creeping in. There's a touch of foolishness in there as well.

Maybe you feel you're at a point where if you don't turn back soon,

it's going to get harder and harder and harder.

Guard your heart. Look to the true king. What would Jesus do?

Maybe you don't even know Jesus, maybe you've never given your life to Christ,

maybe all of this just feels like an academic cautionary tale.

I would urge you also, turn to Jesus.

Turn to Jesus, otherwise you're in a similar state to the Amalekites.

You're detestable to the Lord if you don't know Christ as Savior.

I would urge you, wherever you are, whichever one of those seems the most familiar.

Now is your time to repent. Now is your time just to come before the Lord.

Be open with him. Wear you on. Ask him to bring you back.

Oh, give thanks to him for keeping you. Give thanks to him for constantly reminding you.

Give thanks to him for sending his son, Jesus, as our ultimate example.

Guard your heart. Look to the tree king.

We're going to take communion now. but I think it's sometimes good just to have,

just some time to reflect so just for maybe two or three minutes let's just sit in silent prayer,

just between you and the Lord you know what the Lord has laid on your hearts,

just get yourself right with him take this time now don't park it for later

in the week or this evening,

so many things can come in Let's just spend two, three minutes now just in quiet

reflection and prayer to the Lord, and then we'll take communion.