Early Reign and Rejection of Saul as King Part I

Today we want to continue our study of the first book of Samuel, and we have suggested to you in our study of I Samuel that it is very important for you to be reading along with us, and hopefully reading ahead of the matter we are discussing, because it is impossible for us to read the entire sections which we must deal with in pointing out certain spiritual truths. If you have the verses in your mind you will be better able to understand what we are talking about.

In our last study we considered the annointing and confirmation of Saul as king. We were introduced to this man whom God gave to the nation of Israel because they said, as least by their request and their actions, ``God we are tired of You ruling over us. We want a king like everyone else around us. And God gave them their request.

Today, we re going to be able to see exactly how this worked, whether it was a good idea or not. We are going to begin a consideration of Saul's early reign and his rejection as king. I don't suppose you expected me to use that word rejection so soon. It is sad but it is true that the early reign of Saul was resultant in his rejection as well, yet he did continue to reign sometime after, but his rejection began here.

We suggested to you that you would find a summary of that rejection chapters 13-15 of this particular portion of the word, and of course that would mean that you would need to read those three chapters to have the information clearly in your mind, but we are going to attempt to summarize them for you today. In these chapters we do find certain of his early military exploits recorded. I say certain of them, because in these certain military exploits he expressed the attitude of heart and mind which resulted in his rejection as king.

Now, the first attitude that resulted in his rejection that has a lesson for us which we are going to consider, I have expressed in a few words Saul was foolish. The description of Saul is found in chapter 13, verses 11-13. You might like to follow in your Bibles as I read these verses:

This is the foolishness of Saul. We will attempt to learn more about it and what it has for us from a spiritual standpoint by noticing with you the background of the story which is found in chapter 13, verses 1-7. As we summarize the material we find there we discover that Saul, more accurately Jonathan, but Saul was king and he got the credit, Jonathan made a little soiree into the territory of the Philistines. He attacked a garrison of Philistines. Keep in mind, of course, that the Philistines had Israel under their dominion. So strict was that dominion, if you will glance down at the last paragraph of chapter 13, you will discover that they were not permitted to have any iron of any kind, and anything to sharpen the instruments of agriculture, lest they turn them into weapons of war. As a matter of fact they had to go down into the land of the Philistines to get their agricultural instruments fashioned, the few they had, and to get them sharpened when they needed to be sharpened. So the Philistines had Israel completely under their dominion, and Jonathan wanted to do something about that and he made this brief little soiree into the land of the Philistines.

Then, of course, that stirred them up and made them angry. There in verse 8, you discover that they gathered together some of their biggest forces. As a matter of fact we read here that Saul and Jonathan had about three-thousand men. Johnathan had about two-thousand and Saul had about one-thousand, but when the Philistines started their counterattack, they gathered together thirty-thousand chariots and six-thousand horsemen. An astounding number, so astounding that critics of the Bible who believe there are errors in it say that that would be an impossiblity. No way it could be done. Well, as I have suggested to you before, I have never troubled myself about that sort of thing because if the Word of God says it, there is no reason to disbelieve it unless it can be proved and one man's opinion is just another man's opinion and it is simpler, I think, to accept the record of the men who were there rather than the ideas of men who lived centuries afterward and by their own calculations do not see how anything like that could have happened.

The Philistines were gathered together to really swoop down upon the Israelites and teach them a lesson that they never would forget because they dared to try to throw the yoke of the Philistines from their shoulders, and so when they gathered together, this great group of men, the Israelites, we read in this portion of Scripture, ran and hid themselves in caves and in the rocks, in the thickets and in high places and in pits, and a few of them went over to Gilgal with Saul, they went, the Scripture says, trembling. They were scared to death.

Now why did they go with Saul to Gilgal? Why didn't they go hide in the pits? Well, Samuel, in chapter 10 of this book, had told Saul that he would meet him at Gilgal for the purpose of offering sacrifices to ask the direction and blessings of God upon the Israelites as they endeavored to throw off the yoke of the Philistines. So, Saul was there with his people awaiting the arrival of Samuel, and therein lay the reason for Saul's sin which is described in verses 8-10. He went ahead and offered the sacrifice to God himself.

Well, someone says, ``Was that too much of a sin? Did not Solomon later on offer sacrifices to God? Was it so wrong for a king to offer sacrifices?" No. Now listen carefully to what I am saying. It is not wrong for a king to offer sacrifices in the Old Testament exonomy, because it was done. But, it was wrong for a king or anyone else to offer sacrifices contrary to the commandment of God, and that is what Saul did.

Samuel appeared on the scene and he asked the question which we read in your hearing just a few moments ago. ``What hast thow done?" Now, he knew what he had done. ``What have you done? You have offered this sacrifice. How could you? How dare you?" Well, when any of us are faced with criticism we are prone to make excuses and particularly when our consciences are convicted concerning right and wrong. We usuall find a way to rationalize and straighten the thing out, at least in our own thinking, whether it is straightened out in the mind of God or not.

Saul immediately began to make excuses. We read these verses a moment or two ago and we will not read them again, but let's refresh our minds, recalling what we can what we read. Why did Saul offer this sacrifice. Well, he said, ``The people were scattered." He mean by that that they went off and left him. He said, ``I have no army really." Then he said to Samuel, ``You were late. You did not come when you said you would, and I was increasingly concerned, because my people were gone and the Philistines were getting closer and no sacrifice had been offered to God and I could not believe that I was going to go into battle without at least praying about it."

That sounds good, doesn't it? But, we need to remember that prayer is not a virture in itself. It doesn't help matters unless the praying is done according to the commands of God. Now notice what I said. According to the commands of God. It does not behoove any of us to say anything about the way anybody prays, but we can learn from the Word of God what is expected of us and follow the instructions that are given in the Word of God.

When Samuel heard the words that Saul had to offer about what he had done, Samuel said to Saul, ``Thou hast done foolishly." This is, as I say, the first attitude of heart expressed by Saul that resulted in his rejection. ``Thou hast done foolishly."

I wonder what Samuel meant when he said that. Well, there are two words in Hebrew that are translated by our English word foolishly and one of them is the word nabel which may be translated ``to lightly esteem, or to regard things in a light fashion, or to not look on things with the proper respect." That meaning is expressed in Deuteronomy, chapter 32, verse 15, where we read:

Now, who in the world is Jeshurun? It is not a name you use often but it is a symbolic name for the nation of Israel, and the nation of Israel is described somewhat in the terms of a fat, spoiled cow. Israel got fat, she kicked anytime anybody came around her, she didn't want to be disturbed. When the word fat is used in the sense we find here in this Scripture, it refers to prosperity. What is God saying here in this passage of Scripture? When Israel became prosperous because of the blessing of God, she lightly esteemed the Rock of her Salvation, and who is the Rock of her Salvation? None other than God Himself. God is her Rock.

You see, many of us face that problem. When we are in real trouble it is easy for us to turn to God. When we are in real difficult circumstances it is easy for us to look upon God and tell Him that we need help. But somehow or other, I guess it is part of being alive, when we get prosperous we are prone to forget God and what He has done for us. So, we lightly esteem, that is we go through the motions of religious practices that mean absolutely nothing to us. That is what Saul did when he acted foolishly.

There is another instance recorded in the Word of God, of a man who confessed the act of foolishness and we will look at that instance recorded in I Chronicles, chapter 21, verse 8, because it may help us to understand what we are talking about today:

David who was to follow Saul as king confessed that he had done the very same thing that Samuel had accused Saul of doing. Saul at the moment was not willing to confess it. What did David do? Well, something that you and I would not think was very serious. He was in the midst of great prosperity, and he sent out his commander and he said, ``I want to know how many people we have in the army." The commander respectfully said, ``You know there is no real need of that. We did that just a while ago." But David said, ``I still want to know." So, they numbered the army. What could be so wrong about that? Well, when you read the story you discover that he did that because he wanted to prove to himself and everybody else that he could get along very well without God. He had a big army. What did he need God for. You see, he lightly esteemed the Rock of his Salvation, just as Saul lightly esteeemed God when he dared to day that the offering of a sacrifice was simply a formal thing, a routine thing.

This is probably not as good an illustration as it could be because all illustrations fall short, but I wonder how many of us who believe that the Word of God has a message for us have developed the habit of reading the Word of God simply because we believe we should? How many folk are there who have been taught, maybe believe they should read a chapter in the Bible before they go to bed at night? Well, the idea of course, whether at night before you go to bed or any other time, it is important to feed upon the Word of God, but how many folks who believe that grab up the Bible, they are so sleepy they can't think, they hope they can find a short chapter, they read it and drop off to sleep and it does them absolutely no good?

Now, to most people that is a minor thing, but I wonder if it is not getting very close to lightly esteeming the Word of God. I wonder if it is not getting very close to lightly esteeming God Himself. I think there is something for us to think about here. Evidentlly God thought it was very serious because we have the first announcement of Saul's rejection as king of Israel, for after Samuel rebuked Saul and said,

Keep in mind that forever is a relative word. It refers to the confines of the period under discussion. That is, ``You would have reigned until your reign was over." That is the idea. It doesn't mean that he would reign througout all eternity. ``Your reign would have been forever:

It is important for us to remember that the Word of God in the Old Testament quite often is written in what we call Hebrew perfect, so that Samuel being a prophet could see the future as though it were the present and could speak of the act as already being done. Actually the man Samuel was talking about here was David, and as we are going to read in coming chapters, David had not even been selected at this point, but in the mind of God he had been, because God is the God of the eternal. We are in the habit of thinking that eternity is related to the future, but eternal is a word that means always. It is good to know that God is the God of the eternal because He knows what went on in the past, the present and the future, and He works it all out together. You and I can't do that. We live in the present and that is why sometimes we are devistated when something happens unusual to us in our lives. We can't see how it is related to the past and how it is going to be related to the future, but God sees the picture from the beinning to the end, and that should enable us to relax somewhat, and trust the Lord.

But, Saul was rejected. The announcement of his rejection was first made here, then in I Samuel, chapter 15, the announcement was formalized,being made very definite so that there could be absolutely no doubt about it. In this passage of Scripture, when Samuel was ready to leave Saul, Samuel turned about to go away and he laid hold upon the skirt of his mantle, that is the outer robe that he was wearing and tore it and Samuel said to Saul:

Better in the sense of being more responsive to the Lord God. How did Samuel feel about this? How did God feel about it? Was it just a historical occurance? Was it just changing one king for another? I want you to notice what is written here in verse 11, when God said said to Samuel:

I want us to pause for a moment and think about this verse, because this verse has some tremendous truth in it and it is a verse that we might ordinarily pass over without a great deal of thought. Did you notice what it said there? ``God repented that He had made Saul king." What does that mean? Does that mean that God changed His mind and said, ``Well, I guess I made a mistake. I shouldn't have done this at all. I should have made a better choice." That is not what the word means. The word repent here is the translation of a certain Greek word which speaks of someone crying because of a broken heart. Doesn't that say an awful lot? You see, God is not vengeful when you and I are disobedient to Him. He isn't waiting just to swat us. When we sin, we grieve the heart of God. When we sin we cause God to grieve, to sigh with disappointment.

Now, only a person who loves you very much can be hurt when he see you getting into trouble. Only a person who loves you very much can be hurt when he sees you doing something that he knows is going to bring you a great deal of sorrow. That is how God felt about Saul's active disobedience. It wasn't that God just very coldly said, ``You have broken My commands, now you are going to get it." God was hurt. I wish we could remember that when we are tempted to go against that which we are plainly taught in the Word of God. It grieves the heart of God.

Here is another lesson. Did you notice when we read that verse how Samuel felt about it? We read in that verse we read that it grieved Samuel and we read that he cried unto the God the whole night long. Yes, it made Samuel sad that Saul had sinned. What was his reaction, rebuking Saul and saying, ``You terrible person"? No, he wept, he cried unto the Lord. That word cried there is the translation of a Hebrew word which means to cry out of anguish, to cry out of a broken heart.

Now this is the truth that I want you to get. How sad are you when some Christian brother falls into sin? Are you so sad that you cry all night and pray to God and ask Him for forgiveness and mercy for the brother? Or are you the first person to tell that a fellow brother fell and are you the first person to be critical of what he has done? Think about that.