Answers in Genesis--Spring 2017--Lesson 11-God-Rejects-Saul

, we're gonna do a little bit of review here. Thanks to Dan for doing a great job last week teaching. we're gonna be talking about partially what is the root of disobedience as we consider Saul and his actions. And we'll be covering chapter 13 and 14 or 15, a little bit of chapter 14 of First Samuel, but let's talk just to help us remember a little bit of what happened last week.

Let's ask ourselves a few questions. Anything stand out to you first of all about last week's lesson? Israel rejects God as king. And if not, that's fine, but anything that stands out to you.

Yeah, yeah, there's this desire for Israel to be like. The other nations and that's one of the questions that I think you guys dealt with last week is, is what, what is so ominous about the phrase like all the nations. In their request. Yeah, there's this natural desire for us to conform to the world around us, right?

And so it's like what we've talked about in the past that, nobody has to, we don't have to study. The culture to imbibe the culture. we just, culture happens. We catch culture just like we catch the measles.

And so it's very easy to look around the world around us and just to imbibe it. And just to drink it in. I, I'll have conversations with some young people in my home who remain nameless. That sometimes we'll be asking questions, why?

Do those kids get to do that, but we can't do that. Or you let them have iPhones with full access to the internet, but you're giving us restrictions. Why is that? And so we have these conversations about the ways of the world and things that we're trying to get them to think about, and it's, it's true in the church, it's true in the church.

There's Things that we do and think about in the church that doesn't reflect being conformed, conforming our minds, being transformed by the renewing of our mind but being conformed to the world many times. And that's why Paul has to command in Romans chapter 12, do not be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. If you just put your mind on autopilot, we're gonna find ourselves living just like the Canaanites. But if we are putting our minds in God's word, allowing the Holy Spirit to form us, then that's, that has its effect.

why would God grant Israel's request for a king even though it was a blatant rejection of God Himself? OK, he's merciful. OK. Is it merciful?

If somebody, if a child asks for. Cookies before dinner, is that merciful? If you say, yeah, go ahead and have your cookies. You always have your Your, what first?

Your pie first? That's nice. Yeah, mix things up. That's good.

Yeah, Gary. OK, yeah, there does seem to be something that, some lesson that's going on here. so he tells Samuel to go ahead and grant their request. They haven't rejected you, they've rejected me.

But then we find out later on that this was part of God's plan all along to establish a king and so it's, it's, it's one of those other conundrums in the Bible where if we try to think through this exactly as a man, if we're saying that God must act like a man. Then you come up with strange contradictions where you accuse God of things, but you realize that God is very different from us. it, it, it to me it solves many of these quote unquote riddles, yeah, at the end. Yeah, a passage I forgot to bring up last week.

Oh yeah. Jacob is giving blessings to all his sons, and when he came to Judah, oh yeah, there's this. Explanation King Yeah. Totally.

So Dan says he, he had his Sunday night, revelation which happens to me every single week. Oh, I should have said this. but yeah, you've got that Genesis passage where Judah or Israel is giving out blessings and, and he comes to Judah and gives this blessing, prophesying kingship to come from his line. And so again that's part of the conundrum is we know that kingship is coming.

It's been prophesized way back in Genesis, but the way it comes about is interesting. So, in fact, I'm gonna, I'll bring this up to. How does Genesis 50:20 and Acts 2:22 to 23 relate to this part of Israel's history? If you guys remember Genesis 50:20 is that On the back end of the whole history of Joseph, Joseph says to his brothers, what you meant for evil, God meant for good.

It's already been prophesized that Israel would go into Egypt, be brought out of Egypt, and that God is going to save his people and in this case save his people from the famine. And so here God is orchestrating movements in history and at the same time holding people responsible for their actions. in Acts 2:22, we have Peter's, sermon on the day of Pentecost where, he's, he's basically telling Israel, you with lawless hands took Christ and put him to death, which God had predetermined to occur and so it's like you are lawless but God had predetermined this to occur.

And it's one of the passages I, I take people to all the time when they're asking me questions about human responsibility and divine sovereignty is, we want to run to one side or the other.

Well, God was, was the cross Plan B? Was God heading some other direction and all of a sudden everybody got bent out of shape and said crucify Him and then God said, oh no, what am I gonna do? I guess I'll make use of this. No, the cross was Plan A, and yet there were people that were very culpable for their decisions that got involved in that and fell backwards into God's will.

can, can you or I accomplish this as creatures? No way. It's only a creator that would have the ability to control these movements of history. And so Israel asked for a king.

The long story short is Israel asked for a king. In doing so, they were rejecting God, but also in doing so they were falling backwards into God's sovereign decree that the kingship was coming. the, the reign of David was not Plan B. The reign of David was Plan A.

and so we see God moving things through history. We're gonna see that again today in, in your guys' curriculum notes, I forget what page this is on. But it says the inescapable conclusion is that God turned the sinful desire of Israel to his own purposes. The people rejected God's reign in favor of man, that is Saul to be king, but that rejection of God led to the fulfillment of God's precious plan of redemption through the Godman Jesus Christ, the final everlasting King.

How often God works in this way. Man's sins are not excused at all, but regardless of man's failures, God works out His perfect will. And we just stand at the end of Romans 11 and we just say, praise the Lord. We don't understand this.

We just praise God. Hosea and Romans 11 stand in the same vein. God, you are God. I'm gonna shut my mouth.

We're not like you. Did you have something, Joe, or? Yeah, exactly. Right.

Yeah, so it'd be, it'd be a totally different thing, Joe is suggesting if Israel would have said, we've been, we've been studying the prophecies and we see that kingship is coming and God, how are you going to bring this about? We're submitted to you. How do you want to bring about this king? It's not the way it went down is they were actually wanting to be like the nations and yet God was able to work through their bad desires to accomplish his good and perfect will.

Well, we're gonna see some similar things today. Let's go ahead and open up to first Samuel. Chapter 13. And I've just been in the, in these chapters all week just, I think I suggested to you guys like the NIV dramatized Bible that you can, you can actually listen for it for free on Bible Gate.

that's really good. I found another guy, George Harris. It's not a dramatized version, but he reads the NIV and I just love his reading voice. I think better, better than just about anybody I've heard.

he just does a really good job with his pacing. He's nice to listen to. And he'll also like flush out the characters a little bit. I really enjoyed listening to him this week in these chapters, but let's, let's start in, chapter 13, and then we're going to make some running commentary.

as we go through these chapters. And then we're going to try to deal with an apologetic. ethical issue by the end of our time together. So let's start in verse 1, chapter 13.

Saul reigned 1 year and when he had reigned 2 years over Israel, let's stop right there. Your translations are all over the map on verse one. And that's because anybody know why? Anybody know why verse one is just so wacky when it comes to the numbers?

This is just a portion of the manuscripts that's been lost. There's, there's smudging or there, there's some of the documents, the manuscripts we have have numbers like this that just make absolutely no sense whatsoever. And so one of the commentaries I love to read, Ralph Davies, he says, as soon as we figure out who stole the numbers, let's get into the next section. And it's just one of those examples that while we believe in the inerrancy and authenticity of what we call the autographer, the original manuscripts, we don't have the original manuscripts of First Samuel.

We have many, many copies, and this is one of the few places where it's just, it's just obliterated. It's a mess and so we don't really know. And so I think NIV does the best job it can. It says something like Saul reigned for 30 years and something something.

so anyway, so in that first verse, we're not really sure exactly what those numbers are supposed to be. But verse 2, Saul chose for himself 3000 men of Israel. 2000 were with Saul at Mickmash. I love that location.

And in the mountains of Bethel, and 1000 were with Jonathan and Gibea of Benjamin. The rest of the people, he sent away every man to his tent. Now I, I don't know why some people were sent away to his tent. Maybe they didn't cut the muster or maybe they just looked fearful, sometimes we've seen in the text that sometimes the king will say, if anybody's afraid, go home.

So maybe these folks went home, we're not really sure, but we do know that we've got Jonathan, we've got two groups now. We've got 3000, 1000 men went with Jonathan and 2000 with, with Saul. And Jonathan attacked the garrison of the Philistines that was in Giba and the Philistines heard of it. Then Saul blew the trumpet throughout all the land, saying, Let the Hebrews hear.

Now all Israel heard it and said, Saul has attacked a garrison of Philistines. And that Israel had also become an abomination to the Philistines and the people were called to gather to Saul at Gilgal. A lot of commentators and Bible teachers look at this passage right here and they already smell something's not right. Is Saul's, he's the leader, right?

He's the king. And the one who goes on the attack is Jonathan. And so we don't know exactly why he's the first one to strike. We do know that the press release that came out on the news that night said Saul had attacked and this could be simply just something like, President Trump attacked such and such a place and, the assumption is that he didn't do it.

He sent troops in to do it. or it could be Saul wants to save face and he's putting the press release out that he had actually done the attack. Whatever the case, you don't get the impression that good things are on the horizon. His son is the one that starts the attack.

The press release comes out. He calls everybody out. to, Gilgal, then verse 5, then the Philistines gathered together to fight with Israel. 30,000 chariots and we do have, I believe some, some gloss here.

It's some translations say 3, some say 30. there are some challenges in numbers in the Hebrew manuscripts. So sometimes when you compare English manuscripts you're gonna see like why are the translations showing different numbers? Well, honestly, sometimes in the manuscripts we're not talking about the original, it's difficult to get the exact reading.

On how the numbers should be interpreted and again if we could talk maybe sometime I can do a lesson on textual criticism and how manuscripts descend and how they get assembled and stuff like that but again, this is not a threat to the autographer, this is more of a manuscript issue. So I would side with the 3000 chariots, not the 30,000 readings, so 3000 chariots and 6000 horsemen and people. As the sand, which is on the seashore in multitude, and they came up and encamped at McMash.

To east of Beth Haven when the men of Israel saw that they were in danger, for the people were distressed, then the people hid in caves, thickets, rocks, and holes and in pits.

So this, this victory doesn't last too long. Jonathan goes, has a flash in the pan victory, or he does an attack. And The Philistines are like, this isn't good and so they come on the attack right away. The Israelites look up and they're like, oh.

And this is not a good sign when all of your troops start to hide in caves and pits, thickets and stuff. This is just not, not good for business. Verse 7 and some of the Hebrews crossed over the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead, so even some of them are just trying to get out of town. As for Saul, he was still in Gilgal, and all the people followed him, trembling.

Then he waited 7 days according to the time set by Samuel, but Samuel did not come to Gilgal and the people were scattered from him. So there had been some previous arrangement, go to Gilgal, this is where we're going to have our staging area. if anything about military history or trying to move big numbers of people, you, you don't just suddenly call everybody up and then just take off into battle. You have to stage everything, before D-Day, June.

1941, it was June 6th. OK, I'm having an Alzheimer's, there's huge amounts of materials that are being staged in England and this, this took lots and lots of time. Germany knew that all this stuff was being staged there. They're just waiting.

When's the attack coming, right? and so Gilgal is the staging area. But people are checking out. You've got people in caves, people have run across the Jordan, and even the people that are left are starting to move away from Saul.

He's supposed to wait there for 7 days for Samuel, who is the prophet slash priest in the situation and so Saul said, bring a burnt offering and place offerings here to me. And he offered the burnt offering. So now we've got another bad, bad news. First, Jonathan goes on the attack, not Saul.

Now, Saul is offering sacrifices, not Samuel. So 2 blows, so to speak. verse 10, now it happened as soon as he had finished presenting the burnt offering that Samuel came and Saul went out to meet him. and that he might greet him.

When My children have done something that they're not supposed to do. There's a couple of different reactions I've noticed. One is dad gets home and I can't find anybody or I can't find a particular child. The other thing that will happen sometimes is I come home and one of my children is being incredibly nice.

They greet me at the door. Would you like anything to drink?, what can we do for you, dad? And after a while I start getting a little suspicious. What has this child done?

And normally when I am able to sit down with my wife, I find out what has happened and why they have decided to be so incredibly nice. And so in this case, Saul comes out to greet him. Samuel, as soon as he sees him, says, what have you done? He, he knows all right, right away.

As soon as, as soon as Saul comes running up to greet him, this is, he's a little too giddy for a king right now who is in a staging area with all of his men, running away from him. Saul said when I saw, I want you to notice in the, in the two different chapters, we're going to see how Saul deals with his own sin. And whether he takes full ownership of it, how does he categorize himself, how does he stage himself. So he says when I saw the people were scattered from me.

That's the first problem and that you did not come within the days appointed. This is your fault. And that the Philistines gathered together at Mikmash, which by the way, is a long way away from Gilgal. Gilgal is not set in an area where they would expect attack, by the way.

Then I said, the Philistines will now come to me at Gilgal, which is nonsense, and I have not made supplication to the Lord. I haven't prayed yet. I, I didn't have my quiet time. Samuel, I just, just want to go and spend time with the Lord.

Therefore, I felt compelled based upon all these reasons, it's your fault that I'm worried about getting attacked. Everybody's running away from me. And I offered the burnt offering. Does this sound like repentance or?

Admission of sin. No, this is a stacking of answers for why he did not do what God had told him to do through the prophet Samuel. Now, remember at this time in redemptive history, Samuel does not have the 6 or Saul does not have the 66 books of the Bible. If he wants to hear the word of the Lord, he's gonna get it from where?

Samuel, that's where you get, if you want to go have his quiet time, so to speak, and hear from the Lord, he needed to go to Samuel. And so he had heard from the Lord and the Lord had given him clear instructions. Saul did not follow those instructions. Verse 13, Samuel said to Saul, you have done foolishly.

You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God which He commanded you, for now the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought for Himself a man after his own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be commander over his people because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you. This sounds pretty harsh, but again, we're not, we're not dealing here with some minion in one of the smallest tribes of Israel that just his job is to wash pots.

This is the king This is a guy that's supposed to be leading the people both militarily and spiritually by way of example. He had heard a direct divine revelation through Samuel. And he comes out with excuses and, and so Samuel confronts him on it. And one of the, one of the saddest verses in this book is verse 15.

Then Samuel arose and went up from Gilgal to Gibea of Benjamin and Saul numbered the people presented with him, about 600 men. Why is this such a tragic verse? Well, the only, again, the only access that Saul had to the word of the Lord was Samuel. The word of the Lord had left him.

Samuel was the original plan was that Samuel would come, offer sacrifice. He'd probably hear direction from the Lord on what to do next with the battle plan. We've already seen examples and judges leading up to now that God can deliver by many or by few. In fact, we're going to see it in the very next chapter.

God's going to make a point in the narrative through Jonathan who goes and, and Jonathan has a, he routes the Philistines with just a few. In fact, just him and his armor bearer, they get things rolling. And so Samuel would have known the story of Gideon. Saul knew the stories of Gideon.

He knew God's deliverance of the people out of Egypt into Canaan. These were all very well known, tales of revelation. And yet now we see Saul left. The word of the Lord leaves him, which means he is now left without any guidance.

And so what does he do? He goes over and he just starts counting his men. And now he has 600. At the beginning of this narrative, he had how many?

Yeah, 3000 in total and 2000 in his garrison. Now he's down to 600, probably still trembling. and so it's just a very sad turn of events. Go ahead and turn to 1 Samuel 16:14 real quick and then we're going to come back to chapter 15.

In 1614, we see, but the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and a distressing spirit from the Lord troubled him. This is the beginning of the descent of Saul. So here the, the prophet moves away from Saul. We're going to see one other interaction with the prophet.

but we see the Lord moving away. From Saul. the narrative is meant, It seems to me, you guys can tell me if you disagree, but There should be a sense of tragedy that we're feeling. That that saw we remember the story.

Of, of all these things that happened for Saul being chosen as king. Remember, that they're, they're the whole donkey thing and then Saul approaches him and says, you're going to be the one that's anointed and then on the day of his anointing, he's hiding in the luggage, but then they pull him out and then he goes and he actually has some victories. The Spirit of the Lord comes upon him, gives him great boldness, and, and so we see some amazing things that are happening. Through Saul But at the end of the day in this section, we see a man who is more concerned about The ritual, the superstition of the ritual, then the word of God.

We're not saying that sacrifices are bad. But just like Israel had put a lot of stock into the lucky rabbit's foot of the ark in a few previous chapters, here Saul is thinking, if I can just offer the sacrifice, then that'll be our good luck charm and maybe we'll be able to go into battle instead of waiting for the word of the Lord. And so you see it just a diminishing of wanting to hear. from the Lord and being willing to obey.

Let's go ahead and flip over to chapter 15 now. And this really becomes the The final curtain, so to speak. Foresaw. And we'll start in, in verse, verse one.

We're going to read quite a few verses here and just make some running commentary. So in verse one, and this follows up upon if you guys did some studying this week, you've got the whole tale of Jonathan. Jonathan and his armor bearer go up, they attack and then they put everybody on the run and then Saul makes some weird vow of, nobody should eat anything until we have vanquished the enemy and so everybody's running around starving to death. Jonathan never heard the vow, so he takes some honey.

And so Saul's ready to kill him because of the vow and everybody basically has to pick up Jonathan and and run him away from the king and say, no, you're not gonna kill our victor. so you have these strange scenes and then you come to verse one. Samuel said to Saul, so now, now Samuel has returned back and he says this, OK, I'm gonna give you some direct divine revelation now. The Lord sent me to anoint you King over his people and over Israel.

Now, therefore, heed the voice of the words of the Lord. So the kingship has already been ripped from Saul, but at this point, there's still a relationship that's going on between Samuel and Saul, even though he knows that the kingship eventually is going to be ripped from his family. but verse two, thus says the Lord of hosts, I will punish Amalekch for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came from Egypt. Now, so if you compare this to the book of, like Deuteronomy and actually Axis and Deuteronomy talk about this, the particular instance that's being discussed here is when Israel was coming out of Egypt, Amalek, who's a descendant of Esau.

came up behind them and didn't like attack them in war, set up battalions or, their garrison and said, hey, let's go to battle against each other. They came from behind and attacked the elderly, the women and the children. So basically, like if you think of Lord of the Rings and they're they're supposed to be heading off to what's that big protection place. In the what is it?

Helm's Deep and then 11 of one of them is like there'll be women and children, they'll be very slow that's that's the idea here is Amalek comes up and says we're not going to go after the warriors, we're gonna pick off, pick them off from the back and, kill their kids and elderly and and women and so on. And so, so here the word of the Lord through Samuel is, go and attack Amelech, utterly destroy all they have, do not spare them. kill both man, woman, infant, nursing child, ox, sheep, camel, and donkey.

Kill everybody.

We're gonna come back to this question and, and deal with the whole idea of God commanding the killing of whole families. We're gonna talk about the flood, the Sodom and Gomorrah, Jericho, this one. but this is for now, this is the command. So Saul gathered the people together and numbered them in Teylaim, 200,000 ft soldiers, 2000 men of Judah.

Saul came to the city of Amelech and lay in wait in the valley. Then Saul said to the Kinnites, Go depart. Get down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them, for you showed kindness to all the people of Israel when they came out of Egypt. so the Kennites departed from among the Amalekites.

So this no doubt would have been a word that was sent through a courier, right? Saul would have sent a courier message around to the Kennites said, hey, I know you guys are intermixed with the Amalekites. You need to know that we're about ready to wipe these guys out. If you don't want to get caught up in the mix, you better get out of town quick.

By the way, this is a very common thing that the, that the Lord seems to do. God didn't just wipe out the world with the flood. He sent Noah, who preached for 100 years while he's built an ark before he wiped out the world with the flood. lots running around trying to talk to his brothers-in-law and other people saying we got to get out of here.

And so here the Kinnites listen, they move. Whatever the Amalekites would have overheard, they don't move. they stay right in the, in the situation. waiting for Saul to come and attack.

and Saul attacked the Amalekites from Havilah all the way to Shure, which is east of Egypt. He also took Agag, king of the Amalekites, alive and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, oxen, fatlings, lambs, and all that was good and were unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything despised and worthless that they utterly.

Destroyed, so again, we're seeing this pattern. Saul does not do everything that had come from the word of the Lord. Now, the word of the Lord came to Samuel verse 10. God says, I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.

and it grieved Samuel and he cried out to the Lord all night. So there's, we're not gonna have time to get into all this, but the whole idea of God regretting that he had selected Saul, again, this falls back upon the idea that God knows all things and yet he interacts with us in time and space. did God Was God's, did God regret? Was there sorrow in God the Father's heart when Jesus Christ was being crucified on the cross?

No doubt there was emotional interactions there with Jesus Christ being nailed to the cross when he was being spit upon. God interacts in time. And yet God knew from all of eternity this day was coming and God is the one that orchestrated it. And so God can both regret something that happens in time even though that he has decreed it to occur from eternity past.

Again, Creator creature distinction. And so, so he regrets it and then Saul's, Samuel's not happy either. He's, he's mourning all night. He's, he is, crying out.

Verse 12. So when Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul, it was told, Samuel saying Saul went to Carmel and indeed he has set up a monument for himself and he has gone around, and, passed by and gone down to Gilgal. Then Samuel went to Saul and Saul said to him, Blessed are you, Lord of the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord.

Same thing. Samuel shows up. Now Saul's set up this monument for himself. He says, hey, I've, I've done what the Lord commanded, verse 14.

One of my favorite lines in the whole book, what then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? In the lowing of the oxen, which I hear. This is fantastic. Saul said, Now, now notice, he comes up he's, I've done exactly what the Lord wanted me to do.

Now he's gonna, he takes one step away and then he takes another step away. They have brought them up from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have utterly destroyed. I don't know if you've been in. You've probably experienced this yourself, but if you've been involved in like say a counseling situation where there's somebody who's fallen into sin and they don't want to admit the sin.

it's interesting how creative people can be to describe things that they've done. It wasn't too awful long ago. I was talking to An individual in my household that will go nameless underneath my it's a child it's not my wife I'm gonna have to pay my one of my kids some money for this but I I hear this little this retelling of something that had happened. And, and it made me think, oh wow, that's great.

I'm glad that you decided to do that. But then about 2 or 3 days later, I find out from another parent what was involved in the whole story. And I'm like, huh. the idea here was that, It was a fishing, what do you call it, like a taco box.

I wasn't there. 11 of my children says that there was a the taco box was stolen and so with his own money went out and bought a replacement taco box. I'm like, wow, you didn't have to do that, but that's very thoughtful and I'm really sorry it got stolen, but That's really cool that you went out and bought the new taco box. I found out a few days later from the supervising parent that no, the taco box had been forgotten.

The next day they went back to the location and it wasn't there. That's a little different from stolen. Stolen versus forgot are two different things. So we had a little discussion about what this means, what the words mean, and things like that, and Saul is doing something very similar here.

The people. First of all, it's like, hey, I've done exactly what you wanted. Wait a second, it's the, it's the people that did this that we could all worship. We just want to worship.

It's all about worship. We just want to love Jesus. That's why we did what we did. Verse 16, then Samuel said to Saul, be quiet.

And I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night. This is just you can't make, this is just awesome. then he said, speak on. Now you get the feeling that, Saul is, he's a little sobered up now.

Samuel said, when you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribe of Israel? Did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel? Remember at the beginning of Samuel's reign or Saul's reign. he was humble in his own eyes.

He was like, I, who am I to do this? I, I don't know. I, I can't accomplish this. Even after Samuel tells him for the first time, he just goes home and just behaves as if everything is normal until he's finally anointed.

They have to go find him, pull him out of the luggage and stuff. Now he's setting up this monument for himself after he's disobeyed the Lord again. And, and trying to cast it as I just care about worship. I just, I just care about the worship of the Lord.

Verse 18, now, the Lord sent you on a mission and said, go and utterly destroy the sinners, the wicked ones, literally the Amalekites and fight against them until they are consumed. Why did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil and do evil in the sight of the Lord? Saul says to Samuel, but I have obeyed the voice of the Lord and gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me and brought back Agag, king of of Amalek.

I've utterly destroyed the Amalekites. Do you see the bait and switch here? I, but I did it. This sounds like conversations I have in my own household.

Why didn't you do this? I did. I asked you to do this, but I did do that. I, I did that.

I'm just like, am I like I'll, I'll say this, am, am I taking stupid pills or Do I look, sometimes in my life, do I look stupid to you? It's like this is what we asked you to do. This is what you did and all your parents know exactly what I'm talking about. however, this is, this is not a, 12 year old in your household.

This is the king of Israel that is trying to pull a fast one over the one representative of the word of the Lord on the planet Earth. So, but the, but the people took of the plunder. Now he's back blame shifting sheep and oxen, the best of the things which have been utterly destroyed, the sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal. So Samuel said, Has the Lord a great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord?

Now had God commanded sacrifice? When, in general, were the people of Israel supposed to offer offerings to the Lord? Yes, definitely. So it's not that God has no delight in sacrifice so that he had set up the sacrificial system, but the sacrificial system had been set up in a certain way for a certain purpose.

It had been set up in a way to bring people into a covenant relationship with him and it would make, it would be a complete contradiction for people to be offering up the appropriate sacrifices and then completely violating the relationship that That it'd be like someone going through marriage, going through all the emotions of marriage and on the wedding night, they go sleep with somebody else. It's like, well, what was that all about? You've done the sac you're offering the sacrifices, but you're not obeying the God that you're sacrificing to.

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

Now, here's the clincher for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. Saul wants to categorize this as, hey, I was really just trying to worship the Lord. The people are the ones that really want to do this. I've really obeyed the Lord except when it comes to a gag, what's the big deal?

Rebellion is the sin of witchcraft, stubbornness is the iniquity of idolatry because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has rejected you from being king. This is a, this is a very tough statement. Basically, Samuel is saying that what you're doing is the same type of sin. That the Amalekites were participating in, the Amorites and other peoples that we've sent you to destroy, you are now participating in.

Verse 24. Then Saul said to Samuel, I have sinned. So finally, after all of this, once he's been caught red-handed and he finally realized there's no other way to get out, he says, I have sinned. I have transgressed from the commandment of the Lord your words because I feared the people and obeyed their voice.

So he's still blame shifting even though he says I've sinned. Therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may worship the Lord. There's different takes that people have on this, but I agree with Ralph Davies and other commentators that basically say this is just another, this is Saul just being phony again using repentance like language, and it reminds me of being involved in premarital counseling where you're sitting before a husband and wife. This husband has, has just confessed that he's committed adultery against his wife for the last 5 years.

That 5 years, the last 5 years, everything that she thought was true has now been a, is a complete lie. And then they're back in your office about a week or two later and the husband is saying, I don't understand why she won't forgive me. I asked for forgiveness and now every time I come home, I'm getting tears. I'm getting anger,.

Hey, I, I'm asking, I've asked for forgiveness. Why can't we just move on? That dude just doesn't get it. He doesn't get what he's done and Saul here has no idea.

He, he, he says in verse 25, therefore, please pardon my sin, return with me that I may worship the Lord. Yeah, I know I blew it. But can't you just pardon me? Can't we just go back and just, it can be the way it's always been.

Saul has no, he has no clue the depth of his sin and he's trying to minimize it. Verse 26. Samuel says to Saul, I will not return with you, for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king of Israel. Verse 27, and Samuel turned around to go away.

Saul seized the edge of his robe, and it tore. So Samuel said to him, The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you. And also the strength of Israel will not lie nor relent, for he is not a man that he should relent. So we should keep in mind that verse 29, our writer, the author who's inspired by the spirit, and obviously this part's coming from being recorded from Samuel.

Previously, God had said, I repent that I made Saul King. I'm sorry that I made Saul King. Same word, Samuel says he is not a man that he should relent or repent. We're meant to feel the tension of that.

That on the one hand, God repented. On the other hand, God is not a God that would repent. He, he says, I'm sorry that I made Saul King. On the other hand, just a few verses later, it's saying God does not change his mind is the idea.

And so we're meant to see that, that tension that God is a God who His purposes are unchangeable and yet he interacts with our human affairs and has real emotions that he expresses about those affairs. and so we're meant to sense that and to understand that we're dealing with a God that is beyond, the creature. Verse 30. Then he said, I have sinned.

Yet honor me now, please, before the elders of my people and before Israel and return with me that I may worship the Lord, your God. This is complex. Saul is saying I've sinned, but he's also worried about his own standing before the people. Please return with me.

But notice what Samuel does is he does turn back after Saul and Saul worshiped the Lord. So they go, they offer sacrifice. They're worshiping almost reminds me of the prayer of the king in Hamlet. I don't know if you, if you guys are familiar with Hamlet, but, the, the king who has killed his, his wife's previous husband and now he's on the throne.

He's sitting there trying to pray and trying to cry out to the Lord and he's just like my My thoughts, my prayers go up, but my, my thoughts stay below. what does he say? Words without thoughts cannot to heaven go. He's trying to have this prayer time with the Lord when he still sits on the throne of the guy he murdered.

And so it's just, it's very, very tragic. Then Samuel takes care of business. Bring Agag, king of the Amalekites here to me. So Agag came to him cautiously.

Some, some translations say changed. Agag sheds, surely the bitterness of death has passed. But Samuel said, as your sword has made women childless, so you, so shall your mother be childless among women, and Samuel hacked Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. Then Samuel went to Rama and Saul went up to his house at Gibea of Saul and Samuel went no more to Saul until the day of his death.

Nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul, and the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel. So that's the 3rd time that we've seen that word group of regret or relent. God's sorry that he made Saul king. God is not a man that he would regret or repent.

God regretted that he made Saul king. And and so we have Samuel. Killing a gag in commandment, in fulfilling the commandment of, of the Lord. So let's, let's talk about two things here.

First, is just the The response to Saul and his disobedience. I want to suggest to you that, Saul is He's a tragic character. we need to read. About Saul through the lens of the prophetic word of God.

That Samuel has given us the appropriate way to interpret Saul. Saul's coming up and true to character of, of many of us, is trying to cover his tracks continuously. He's not interested in obeying the Lord. he's interested very much about the show and the honor in front of people.

Once he's, once his sins discovered, then he'll put on a show of worship, but doesn't seem to have any idea of the gravity of his own sin. And it's, and this is truly tragic and it's meant to, it's meant to hit us hard. It hits Samuel hard. imagine Samuel.

Samuel is the one that receives the word of the Lord to go anoint Saul as king. And when Samuel goes to anoint Saul, is Samuel all, yeah, I'm pro king, let's do it. Is that the way Samuel is? No, first, at, at the beginning, Samuel's like, this is not good.

Your people, why are your people asking for a king? So God has to guide Samuel through this process and says, and yes, they, they've rejected me, they have rejected you, but I want you to do this anyway. So Samuel buys in, he obeys the Lord. He anoints Saul as king.

And, and really seems to come to love Saul and, and sees the Lord falling upon him and doing great things. Saul is really a judge in his own rights in the sense that he's, he's delivering Israel from their enemies, but ultimately after 30 or 40 years of reigning, Saul's life just begins to descend. As he moves away from the word of the Lord and Samuel's struggling with that. he obeys the Lord.

He gives the word out. You can really see some admirable characteristics in Samuel. That even though Samuel is, he's heartbroken, there's a part of him that doesn't want to see this happen. When he gets the word of the Lord, he goes and he delivers it.

And And even at the very end, he, you can see him having a little compassion on Saul and he goes over and he offers the sacrifices, allows Saul to worship, have his quiet time, so to speak, and then he moves on. And so we see these two characters, I think we should feel the same tension that Samuel feels as we read this text and we should be severely warned by what happened to Saul, that here's a man that got completely caught up, in his own estimation and not caught up in the word of the Lord.

was willing to go to the ritual rather than the word of the Lord, was not willing to obey all of the commands of the Lord when it came to Agag and the Amalekites and so on. The last thing, and, and I'll, I'll introduce this, I don't know, we, we'll probably have to pick this question up more later next week is what about just the question.

Of not just in this text but in several texts in the Old Testament where God is involved in annihilating whole families and whole nations of people. Here it's clear that God commands through Samuel to Saul to go kill the Amalekites, every one of them, man, woman, child, and infant, and all their animals. And many people look at this and they don't have such a trouble with Saul and his disobedience. They would say what Saul did was minimal.

In fact, many would argue that what Saul did was right. What it, it's what God commands, that's wrong. In fact, Richard Dawkins says this, the God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynist, homophobic, racist, inocidal, genocidal, filicidal, a pestilential, megalomaniamaniac, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent, malevolent bully.

It's a mouthful. Charles Templeton says the God of the Old Testament is utterly unlike the God believed in by most practicing Christians. His justice is by modern standards outrageous. His biased, querulous, vindictive, and he is biased, querulous, vindictive, and jealous of his own prerogatives.

At the separate conference I was at here just recently, Al Mohler said that the larger objections today to the scriptures are not so much, are there contradictions or are there manuscript issues, it's the morality question. How is it that the God of the Bible can do things like this and yet we praise Him for it, or we, we want to portray this God who's loving and forgiving and he's patient with everybody. And so let me give you my 3 minute version and then next week we'll get into this more.

in more detail.

When you look at the various examples throughout the Bible, there's many of them. There's the flood, there's Sodom and Gomorrah, there's, the Jericho instances, there's, What we see here in First Samuel. is you see a a a pattern. Of, of reactions.

And the first of those patterns is that God declares an annihilation form of judgment to stamp out a cancer. God doesn't deal with every people group in every situation this way, but there are certain times like with the flood and Sodom Gore, Jericho, the Amalekites, where God declares an annihilation, and it's, there's a particular Hebrew word, I'm forgetting which word it is, but it's like go in and wipe everything out. This is the type of action that I want to command. The second pattern is that the judgments are for public recognition of extreme sin.

In Sodom, the outcry had gone up. God is responding to this great outcry. In Revelation, you see people crying out, oh Lord, when are you going to bring your judgment? And so there seems to be this response to an outcry.

Thirdly, judgment is preceded by warning and long periods of exposure to the truth in time to repent. from the time that God had predicted that judgment would come on the Malekites until it was carried out was between 350 and 400 years. From the time when God announced the judgment upon the whole world before it was carried out was at least 100 years. if something tragic or terrible happened here in the, in the United States or another part of the world, it was reported on CNN News, how many people would be ready to, just executing and bringing full, full, warfare immediately.

and yet God in His decrees is waiting hundreds of years before, as, as like some of the language of the Old Testament, the cup or their cup is full. 4th Any and all innocent adults are given a way of escape with their families, sometimes all given a way to avoid judgment via repentance or leaving a particular region. It should also be noted that the expulsion from the land was the most common way of judgment. And so this is, this is very common.

Adam and Eve, they fell, God removes them from the Garden of Eden. Israel is, is ready to come in Jericho and Rahab and, and her associates are allowed to, to move away. No doubt there would have been others that would have known. That Israel was on its way.

In this case, the Kennites are told, hey, we're about ready to come in. We're gonna, we're gonna go to warfare against Amalekite. This is all out warfare. If you want, if you want to avoid this, get out of town now.

No doubt the Amalekites would have also heard these couriers, and so this is another part of the pattern. 5th, someone is almost always saved when we see this type of warfare carried out. We have a lot in his family, we have Noah in the ark. We have the Kinnites.

God is almost always pulling somebody out before judgment falls. And then 6th, judgment eventually falls. Sometimes God is the one that brings the judgment directly, through a flood, through the fire of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the Old Testament, sometimes the judgment comes via the sword through Israel.

we also need to remember that Israel also, felt the pains of similar types of judgment as they were, it was commanded in Deuteronomy 28 that if you guys follow the way of the Malekites, you follow the way of the Canaanites, here's what's gonna happen to you. God's gonna bring other peoples in upon you and things are gonna be so terrible that the women are gonna want to eat their own children because they're starving. That's go read Deuteronomy 28. And there's some terrible language in there of warning to Israel themselves., next week we could talk about should the church pick up the sword and go into battle as Israel did.

The quick answer is no, we're in a different dispensation. look to, One final passage and then we'll, we'll close in prayer. Look, everybody turn to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2.

ultimately, we have to, we have to decide whether we believe that God It is true Or whether every, whether men have the right to judge God's actions. That's the bottom line., it's very clear from the Bible that abortion is a terrible sin, and yet, places like China had their one-child policy for years and years and years, now it's a two-child policy. They despise that principle of the Lord. What happened to their culture, all of a sudden now they're in in a situation.

To where they have so many boys across the land, they can't find enough wives for their kids and so now they have actually raids on villages to try to get wives for their boys. you can look at a documentary called The Lost Girls of China, just terrible things that are going on there because people thought they were smarter than God. In our own culture, we've, we've aborted 57 million babies. And what that's done to the overall structure of our society?

Now we've got like this small work base that's trying to support this huge work base of people that are retiring and there's not enough people at the bottom to support them, the whole Social Security crisis and things like that. Imagine if you had 57 million other workers in the United States that were able to contribute and support the people that are older. Do you think that might help the Social Security problem to have 57 other people working and paying into Social Security, but people, we're all smarter than God and, and, and so on.

Anyway, look at 2 Thessalonians and we're gonna just look at the, let's see, verse 4.

So we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for the patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure. So Thessalonians had been getting whipped up on. They've been getting persecuted badly, almost like the Amalekites coming up and persecuting the Israelites coming out of Egypt. Verse 5, which is manifest evidence of the righteous judgment of God that you be counted worthy of the kingdom of God for what you suffer.

That's weird. OK, so God's manifesting, this is actually building towards something. It's evidence of God's righteousness to judge and it's also something that evidences you being counted worthy to suffer. 6, since it's a righteous thing for God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you.

It's righteous for God to pay with tribulation those who trouble you and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels and flaming fire, taking vengeance upon those who do not know God, on those who do not obey the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, these being punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord. What's he saying? He's saying, God, God looks out for his children and it's righteous for God to judge those who pick on his kids.

Those who pick on his kids will get theirs from God.

we put up on our fences, beware of dog and but God says beware of harming this flock. If you harm this flock, then you better beware of God. Because I will bring my judgment upon those that harm my children. And by the way, this is the full gospel.

When you look at verses like Isaiah 62:1, the full gospel isn't just that God comes to proclaim favor for the favorable year of our Lord. It's also that he comes to execute justice and vengeance upon his enemies. The full gospel is that his people who are in Christ get favor, his enemies get vengeance. That's the message from Genesis to Revelation.

And so ultimately if we're thinking about things from a biblical perspective is that we rejoice in God's salvation of his people who believe by faith and we're worthy of judgment as well, but we also praise God for his protection of us as he vindicates and throws out his, his vengeance upon all of those who would despise His Son and despise his church. So anyway, I'll send you guys an article this week on that topic. Maybe we'll spend a little bit of it and review next week. If you want to talk more, I'll be up here after the lesson, but let's pray.

Lord, we are sobered by the life of Saul and how that this man who seemed to start well finished so poorly and we haven't even seen the end of his life yet. we pray, Father, that we would be warned, that we would, we would be those that would not despise your word and would not uphold ritual and our own wisdom above what we have been revealed in the Bible. We thank you, Lord, for your mercy and your justice. We pray, Father, that you'd help us to trust you above the wisdom of man.

we thank you that you are a God that cares, about your flock and that you will protect that flock. And we pray, Father, we thank you Lord for the hope that is in this passage that this actually opens up a new curtain in history of the coming of the King David and so we look forward to seeing that next week. Ask that you just continue to be with us as we worship you in Christ's name. Amen.