1 and 2 Samuel: The Gospel According to Saul | Associate Pastor: Matt Armstrong

So, yeah, we're back in uh 1st and 2 Samuel, walking through.

We were there before Lent, I think, a couple months ago.

Then we saw that God's people had cried out to have a king like the other nations, and Yahweh had acquiesced to that desire, that request, and he gave them a man named Saul.

Over the next five chapters that we're gonna kind of do an overview this morning, we see the rise and fall of King Saul.

And this is a great study on the human tendency, the heart, the tendency of the human heart to reach for idols, something other than God that can protect us, give us hope, give us a sense of safety.

Saul's story sets us up for the lesson that will come at the anointing of David next chapter: that man looks at the exterior appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

Let's jump back into verse chapter 12.

Bless you.

And the Lord sent Jerubabel and Barak and Jephthah and Samuel and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and you lived in safety.

And when you saw that Nahash, the king of the Ammonites, came against you, you said to me, No, but a king shall reign over us.

When the Lord your God was your king.

Now behold, the king whom you have chosen, for whom you have asked, behold, the Lord has set a king over you.

Brings us to our first point.

The fallen human heart is an idol factory.

If you're familiar with John Calvin, the famous Reformed theologian, this was his kind of famous quote, that the fallen human heart, it's like it's literally a factory that's just pumping out idols constantly.

The human heart can make an idol out of anything.

I defy you to come up with something that can't be an idol of the heart.

Saul has already been anointed as king over Israel, and Samuel, as God's prophet and also the last judge over Israel, as he's fading into the background, he wants to give Israel one last warning against the tendency of our hearts to cling to something we feel we can control.

In chapter 12, chapter 12 is like Samuel's goodbye speech.

God's people get into trouble.

Point one.

Point two, they cry out to the Lord.

Point three, the Lord rescues them.

Point four, the people rejoice.

Point five, the people forget the Lord.

And then we just rinse and repeat over and over and over again.

But Samuel isn't making the point that I would make about Israel's failure, right?

When I look at this, I think, man, Israel, you stink.

I mean, how often does the Lord come and rescue you from yourself, your own blindness?

But Samuel's point is not to point them to their failure, but to point them to the Lord's faithfulness.

God was Israel's king.

He had shown himself faithful again and again and again.

What he wants to emphasize is point three, the very central point.

There it is.

No matter how often, Israel, you forget the Lord, you fall into sin, you walk away.

The Lord has been faithful as your king.

To provide, to rescue, to love.

And yet, when the people of Israel saw the other nations and that they had a human king who led them, they thought, that's what we need.

And Samuel's response is understandable.

He is dumbfounded.

Why, why, O people of God?

God has never let you down.

But you see, the people want something tangible.

They want someone they can see and touch and hear, something they could possibly manipulate, something they could possibly control, something that God will never be.

In other words, they want an idol.

They want a source of hope and rescue other than God.

Let's continue in chapter 12.

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

And Samuel said to the people, Do not be afraid.

You have done this evil.

Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart.

Do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty.

For the Lord your God will not forsake his people for his great name's sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.

Point two is that our God is gracious to forgive us our sins.

Miraculously, Samuel's sermon worked every pastor's dream.

The people are cut to the heart and they repent.

And they ask Samuel to intercede on their behalf before the Lord.

Pray for us so that the Lord's wrath does not pour out on us.

And here we see the gracious heart of God.

Samuel doesn't rub it in their face.

Samuel doesn't say, shame on you.

He says, Don't be afraid.

For the Lord your God has chosen you.

He has already forgiven you.

People mistakenly often see, and maybe you fall into this category, I hear this all the time from lots of different people inside and outside the church, but tend to see the God of the Old Testament as angry and wrathful, but the God of the New Testament as gracious and loving.

But that actually couldn't be farther from the truth.

You see, what we see in the Old Testament is we get this long view over years and decades and centuries.

We get to see the history of God's people.

God's people over time and the repeated pattern of sin and redemption.

And it's actually easier for me to see my life mapped onto the history of Israel than it is sometimes in the New Testament as the Messiah has come and God's new church is being birthed and unfolding.

More often than not, my life looks like the history of Israel of repeated rescues from God.

Oh my gosh, I can't, God has met me, He has delivered me.

Man, 30 times in my life I've recorded God's faithfulness and deliverance.

But here comes that 31st time.

Is he gonna come through?

Will he be faithful this time?

It's the very pattern we see taught in the New Testament.

As John writes, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

Amen?

Amen?

That's right.

Okay, here we go, into chapter 13.

He saw 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 offerings.

As soon as he had finished offering the burnt offerings, behold, Samuel came.

Now isn't that always the way?

And Saul went out to meet him and greet him.

Samuel said, What have you done?

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'mash, 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 offerings.

Samuel said to Saul, You have done foolishly.

You have not kept the command of the Lord your God, with which he commanded you.

Point three, our greatest sin is not believing that we are loved by God in Christ.

Saul finds himself in a bit of a pickle.

He and Samuel had a prearranged plan given to them by the Lord.

This uh, they Saul was to go down to the battleground and to wait seven days, and then uh Samuel would come and make the offering, the burnt offering, and then the battle would ensue.

But Samuel was late in Saul's view.

And the people of Israel began to scatter.

They were getting nervous, they were getting bored, whatever.

We've been here seven days, how long is this gonna take?

I've got stuff at home to take care of.

He was losing his army.

How can I win a battle if I have no army?

It's a pretty practical question.

I don't know about you, but I feel a lot of compassion for Saul in this passage, and maybe it's less compassion for Saul as compassion for myself.

Because I see myself so clearly in his response.

How often do I take matters into my own hands when it seems like the Lord won't show up in time?

How often do I take matters into my own hands because I think I have a better perspective?

I'm on the ground level, I can I can see the angles God, He's pretty busy doing other things.

How often do I tell God what He should be doing through my prayers?

Rather than simply crying out to the Lord and trusting him to know how to answer.

Beloved, where are you currently being tempted to believe that God is late?

Or that you need to twist his arm to get what you need.

You see, here's the problem.

In verse 12, Saul admits what was going on in his heart.

He's very open.

When he saw that the people were scattering and that the Philistines were mustering their strength, he said to himself, Now the Philistines will come down against me.

And I have not sought the favor of the Lord.

You see, Saul believed that if he didn't offer these sacrifices, he saw Yahweh, Israel's God, like all the other pagan gods, who need to be convinced, who need to be bought off, who need to be persuaded.

And so he said, if I don't do this now, I can't trust in the Lord's promise because this may slip away from me and I may not get what I want.

Disaster can ensue for me, for God's people.

We have so many excuses.

And so Saul did what we often do.

He he wanted to make sure, he wanted to do something to gain the favor of God.

But he forgot, or he never learned, that he already had God's favor.

He was a people of God's own choosing, and he was anointed king over Israel.

It was Saul's lack of faith that God already loved him that led him to sin.

And beloved, I believe that the root of all sin is our lack of belief that God loves us and so is trustworthy.

All our sins flow out of this.

Why do we run to idols?

Why do we take control?

Why do we break God's commands?

Because we don't think that they're gonna come through for us.

We don't actually believe that God is our Father, that Jesus has died for all of our sins, and that He will provide for all of our needs.

And so we have to make the way ourselves.

I love this quote from Henry Nowen, and I read it almost every day, and I commend it to you.

My true spiritual work is to let myself be loved fully and completely, and to trust that in that love I will come to the fulfillment of my vocation.

And so I keep trying to bring my wandering, restless, anxious self home so that I can rest there in the embrace of love.

Beloved, if you are in Christ by faith, you are a beloved son or daughter of God, and he wants you to know more than anything else in the world that he loves you, that he is with you.

He is not disappointed in you.

Now, in chapter 15, we come to the last straw for Saul.

The Lord has commanded him to wage war against the Amalekites.

God says, I'm ready to pour out judgment on these people.

For when my people Israel were fleeing slavery in Egypt, the Amalekites took advantage of them, fought against them.

And so part of that command to Saul was something called harem warfare, or to devote this whole people to destruction.

What that means is they were to leave no one alive, no human, no cattle, no livestock, and not to take any treasure from the battle.

But when Samuel, the prophet, arrives, this is what he finds.

He says, What then is this bleeding of sheep in my ears and the lowing of oxen that I hear?

Saul said, They, they have brought them from the Amalekites, and for the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen to sacrifice it to the Lord.

The rest was devoted to destruction.

Point four.

Obedience is better than sacrifice.

You see, Saul disobeyed the Lord.

This is Saul disobeying the Lord for the last time.

Little allowances here and there, excuses continued to accumulate.

Saul blames the people for his own unfaithfulness while seeking to claim that he is remaining faithful himself.

And Samuel is having none of it.

Now, two fascinating truths come out of this passage.

First is what Samuel says to Saul in verse 17.

He says this Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not head of the tribes of Israel?

The Lord anointed you king over Israel.

You see, Samuel sees into Saul's heart and he exposes what we said before.

Saul didn't think too highly of himself, he thought too lowly of himself.

He was little in his own eyes, and so he feared the people rather than fearing the Lord.

And beloved, the same is true for us.

We often fear other people.

We give in to sin, not because we think too highly of ourselves, but because we see ourselves too lowly.

If we would embrace the fact of God's love for us, unconditional, never-ending, conquering love, and the fact that we are his anointed, beloved sons and daughters, we would have great power to fight sin, to speak truth, to love our enemies.

And that's exactly what Samuel is calling Saul back to, his God-given identity.

He says, The Lord has anointed you king over Israel.

Yet you live like a slave to the people.

How often do we, beloved, live as slaves to our sin rather than free sons and daughters, for that is who we are.

Second, Samuel says this has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord?

Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.

You see, Saul is exhibiting the tendency of all of our hearts to have our outer exterior, our outsides look holy while our insides are far from the Lord.

This is easy to do in the South, right?

What do we do?

We go to church.

What do we do?

We get cleaned up.

What do we do?

We look good.

That's what Russ was referring to earlier.

We look good on the outside.

Jesus spoke out against the Pharisees about this very point.

He said, You're whitewashed tombs, you look great on the inside outside, but on the inside you're full of death.

We could paraphrase this that the Lord wants our hearts.

The Lord longs for us to love him, to receive his love.

And sure, he dotes over us, he loves us as a parent, loves a child, but he could care less what we look like on the outside if we aren't healthy and spiritually strong on the inside.

Again, this is what we'll hear next chapter.

Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

Beloved, the Lord loves you, and more than anything, he wants your love in return.

But the only way to get there is to receive his love first.

The rise and fall of Saul teaches us many things about the heart of God and the idle, loving nature of our fallen hearts.

Because of sin, we continue to distrust our good God.

Now, the Lord is about to take the kingdom away from Saul, and he'll anoint another, a man after God's own heart, David.

But if you read the story of David, you know that David also fell short.

And so Saul and David both point us to a future and a better king, King Jesus.

Where Saul and David and we fail, King Jesus succeeded.

He is the embodiment, literally the enfleshed love of God for us.

And so when we put our faith in him, we become sons and daughters of God.

He is the one who will never let us down.

It is on him on whom we place our faith.

Let's pray.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, thank you that you love us far better than we deserve.

Far more than we understand.

Lord, what we ask is that we would understand how high and wide and long and deep is your love for us in Christ Jesus.

That is enough for us.

I pray and ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.