Waiting on God

Welcome to week five of our Bible study in 1 Samuel called The Coming King. Today we're going to cover chapters 11, 12, and 13. And in our studies so far, we've gleaned a lot of important concepts. We have talked about listening for the voice of God. We have talked about waiting on God and not getting ahead of God. And so today, I have titled our lesson, A Heart After God. And what I mean is a heart that honors God above fear, above pride, above people, above circumstances. Sounds easy, right? Well, we'll get into it. Today, what I'm going to do is cover each chapter separately. Chapter 11 is about Saul. Chapter 12 is primarily about Samuel. Chapter 13 about Saul. So we'll do a little bit of a recap at the end of each one. So as we begin chapter 11, geographically, we move away from the hill country of Ephraim that we have been talking about for these past weeks. And we go across the Jordan to a city called Jabesh Gilead. I hope you looked at it on the map. Jabesh is close to the Ammonites. Now, there were three people groups when we did our Bible study through Wilderness Way that we found out that God had told Israel, I don't want you to conquer their land. I've given them their land. It was Esau and the two sons of Lot, Moab and Ammon. And so the Ammonites were people that they were never to conquer and take over. So they had to learn to live with them as neighbors. And sometimes in life, we have to learn to live with neighbors, right? And borders matter. Boundaries make good neighbors. In the current house that we're living in, years ago, our son purchased the home right next door. We were super excited, our son and his wife. And the first thing that he did was built a fence between our properties. And the second thing that he did was bill us for half of the fence between our properties. He's a good businessman, and he was a good neighbor. And fences make good neighbors, right? So Jebesh Gilead was a tribe that needed to live next door and be neighbors with someone. The Ammonites were not good neighbors, and they were invading the borders or the boundaries of this city. And it wasn't an invasion like is in our news today with tanks and artillery. This was a slow invasion, less messy. It was called a siege where they put sanctions over the city. Nobody in, nobody out, and they would just wait it out until they gave up. And so that's how we begin in verse one. Then Nahash, whose name means snake, by the way, the Ammonite went up and besieged Jebesh Gilead. And the men of Jebesh said to Nahash, make a treaty with us, and we will serve you. Now listen, this siege was probably going on for a while. I don't think they said that on day one, okay? This has been happening for a while. Why would the men of Jebesh Gilead said, we'll make a treaty with you? Well, so they could live, okay? That's a big important reason to want to do that. So Nahash said, on this condition that I gouge out all of your right eyes and thus bring disgrace on all Israel. Well, what was the advantage to Nahash of not just invading and wiping them out? Why would he agree to this condition? Well, look it, he got a supply of servants out of the deal. And servants that there would be no mutiny because they couldn't see well, and so they would probably not fight against him. So I think he thought it was win-win. So in verse three, the elders of Jebesh said, okay, so give us seven days and we'll send messengers throughout all the territory of Israel. And if no one will save us, well, then we'll do this. We'll give ourselves up to you. Okay, now we're gonna pause for a long time here. Why did they think there was a chance that no one would come and help them? Now they were across the Jordan River, but why would Israel not help them? Okay, it's been fascinating to me how many times in this Bible study we'd lean back on the book of Judges. So the end of the book of Judges, those stories that we wanted to barrel through, that we didn't want to read about, the Levite with the concubine in Gibeah. That bad night, the concubine's denned, he cuts her up. He sends her throughout all Israel and says this thing should not be done in Israel. And all Israel's gathered at Mizpah and says, yes, we need to fight against the men that did this, the men of Gibeah. But somehow it turned into all the men of Benjamin. Do you remember this? All right, so there was the civil war between Israel and Benjamin during this time. And by the time it was all over, there were only 600 men of Benjamin left. No women, 600 men that had gone off and hid someplace. And so now Israel was saying, well, this is terrible that the whole tribe of Benjamin is going to be wiped out because there's no women, they can't perpetuate this. And so they felt so bad and they said, we should help them find wives. Who didn't come when we said to come and fight against them? Who didn't come? Oh, Jabesh Gilead, they didn't come. Two things about that. First of all, they didn't come and fight against this offense. Second of all, they also didn't come to make that promise, we'll give none of our daughters to these people. So then Israel, do you remember what we talked about? When a nation has a time of turning from God, they go crazy and they do crazy things. So they went over to Jabesh Gilead, killed just about everybody, stole 400 virgins, came and brought them to the men of Benjamin, and that's what perpetuated the tribe. Saul's mother or grandmother may have been from Jabesh Gilead, okay? There were no women left according to what it was told us. So anyway, so when the men of Jabesh Gilead say, I don't know if anybody's gonna come, they're still feeling this history that they have. Okay, we get to verse four now. When the messengers came to Gibeah of Saul, they reported the matter in the ears of the people, and all the people wept aloud. Now Saul was coming from the field and he said, what's wrong with the people? Why are they weeping? And so they told him the news of the men of Jabesh. So the reaction of the people is to cry about it, but not Saul. He doesn't cry about it, look at this. And the spirit of God rushed upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled. He took a yoke of oxen and cut them in pieces, and sent them throughout all Israel saying, whoever does not come out after Saul and Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen. And then the dread of the Lord fell upon the people, and they came out as one man. All right, so he isn't threatening their life in this act. He's not saying, if you don't come and help fight for us, we're gonna kill you. That's not what he was saying. He said, if you don't come and help, so shall it be done to your oxen, your livelihood, not your life. In other words, he was saying, don't just keep going about your business as if this doesn't matter to you. We want everybody together. And I really think that he was dramatically reproducing that same effect as we read about at the end of Judges. This time, though, it was a little easier to take, because it was an oxen that was cut up. But he was trying to make a link with those two events. That's what's so beautiful about the Bible, is that we've got this history going on that we can begin to understand why people do what they do. So Saul is acting like a leader here. God has equipped him. And sometimes God's equipping is a righteous anger. Now, don't go home and use that as an excuse. Next time you get mad at something, don't say, well, Sue says that when the spirit of God rushes upon someone, righteous anger is what follows. But we do read this occasionally in scripture, and so we can put those two things together. So in verse 8, he mustered the people at Bezek. Israel had 300,000, Judah 30,000, and they sent messengers back now to Jabesh in the middle of verse 9. Tell them, tomorrow by the time the sun is hot, you shall have salvation, which made the men of Jabesh glad, understatement. And the men of Jabesh therefore said to Nahash, tomorrow we will give ourselves up to you and you may do to us whatever seems good to you, boy, they were really relying that the men of Israel were gonna come through for them, weren't they? And so the next day Saul put the people in three companies, and they came into the midst of the camp in the morning watch. And they struck down the Ammonites until the heat of the day, and those who survived were scattered so that no two of them were left together. And then the people said to Samuel, well, now who was it that said, shall Saul reign over us, bring those men here that we may put them to death? But Saul steps in front and he says, not a man shall be put to death today, for the Lord has worked salvation in Israel. And Samuel said to the people, come, let us go to Gilgal, and there renew the kingdom. So all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal. There they sacrificed peace offerings before. for the Lord and their Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly. So as a wrap-up to this chapter, what I want to do is draw a few lessons for leading. What can we learn to apply to our lives from what we have read here? And because Saul is a great king so far, isn't he? This has been fantastic. So lesson number one, and I'll put them on the screen for you too, Saul didn't waste energy on offenses. Those messengers came from Jabesh Gilead and they came into his territory and they whispered, it says they whispered in the ears of all the people. Now it would have been so easy for Saul to say, why am I the last to hear about everything? Have you ever said that in your home? Like all the kids know about something that's going on. You say, why am I the last one to hear about this? And you're just frustrated or in another situation. Here's the thing, Saul didn't even waste time on that offense. It wasn't offense. It should have come directly to him and said, Hey, we need your help. You are the king. After all, you have the ability to help, but they, they didn't, but he didn't waste time on offense. He just went to the business of getting what needed to be done. Number two lesson for leading is Saul was led by the spirit and he walked in wisdom. The spirit of God rushed upon him. God equipped him for this task. God gave him a holy indignation and he trusted God's leading. He rallied the support. He leaned into the equipping of the Lord and he trusted that God had given him everything that he needed and we can learn some good lessons from that. Thirdly, Saul resisted both gloating and retaliation. How delicious is it to be proven right in front of people who formerly criticized you? I could live on that for a long time. It feels really good, doesn't it? And you sort of want to perpetuate that. And so when someone starts saying, well, now who is criticizing Saul? Bring them in here. We are going to kill them. Saul steps up and goes, nobody's going to die today. And furthermore, he reminds them this wasn't about me anyway. He said, for today, the Lord has worked salvation in Israel. This wasn't about me. This was about what God did. And so he treated those people with grace and he gave glory to God. Now I want to ask you a question. Does it bother you today that we're highlighting all of these positive traits in Saul? You know a little bit probably about this man. Does it bother you that all we're saying is good things about him today? It may because we, in the Bible, we want people to be all bad or all good. And in life, we want people to be all bad or all good. If we like a president, we don't want to admit he does one thing that's wrong. If we don't like a president, we do not want him to do something that's good. We want people to stay in their categories. The reality here that we learn is that God chose Saul, God equipped Saul, Saul walked in God's blessing until he didn't walk in God's blessing, until he walked in his own blessing. And we need to remember this as we deal with people going through life. We're not all good. We're not all bad. Let's move to chapter 12. This is basically a one long speech by Samuel in our study guide. We divided it into three sections and that's the way I'll take it. First, Samuel's faithfulness as a leader, God's faithfulness to the nation of Israel, and then Samuel warning them to serve the Lord with their whole heart. So first section is verses one to five, Samuel said to Israel, behold, now I've obeyed your voice in all that you have said to me and I've made a king over you. And now behold, the king walks before you and I am old and gray and behold, my sons are with you. In other words, my sons are not leaders. They're just like you. They're with you. We resolved this. I have walked before you from my youth until this day. And now I think in a contrast to what Samuel had told the people earlier, what God told Samuel to tell them about what a king was going to be like, do you remember last week? The king is going to take your sons. He's going to take your daughters. He's going to take your vineyards. He's going to take, take, take, take. And in contrast to that, I think Samuel is trying to tell them, that's not what I've been like. Middle of verse three, whose ox have I taken? Whose donkey have I taken? Whom have I defrauded and whom have I oppressed? And he got them to agree with him that he didn't do any of those things. He had not been acting that way toward them. So then he moved on. They agreed. And so he moved on to God's faithfulness to them. And in the Bible, it always begins in Egypt. And that's where he began in verse eight, when Jacob went into Egypt and the Egyptians oppressed them. Then your fathers cried out to the Lord and the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, who brought your fathers out of Egypt and made them dwell in this place. But they forgot the Lord, their God. And he sold them into the hand of Caesara and the hand of the Philistines and the hand of Moab. And they fought against them and they cried out to the Lord and said, we have sinned because we've forsaken the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtoreth. But now deliver us out of the hand of our enemies that we may serve you. And so Samuel reminds them that God raised up a leader when they needed a leader. He says the Lord sent Jerubbael, who was Gideon, Barak, Jephthah, Samuel, he talks about himself in the third person, and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side. And you lived in safety. God has been faithful to you in giving you leaders. Verse 12. But 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. That's what makes me think Nahash had been besieging Jebus, Gilead for quite a while because Samuel's tying it back to something that had happened previously. Verse 13. Now behold the king whom you have chosen for whom you have asked behold, the Lord has set a king over you. And he ends this speech with a warning for them to serve the Lord with all their heart, which these verses are something that we can really take to heart our own selves. It goes like this, verse 14.

And we have a little intermission here for three verses where we see Samuel and the Lord bring this thunderstorm to put an exclamation point on what he's saying. We'll pick it up in verse 19. The people said to Samuel after this thunderstorm, pray for us, 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. Samuel said, do not be afraid. You have done all this evil yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. What he's saying is it's not too late to change. That's a good message. It's not too late to change, not too late to repent. Focus your heart now to serve the Lord. Verse 22, for the Lord will not forsake his people. And if that phrase isn't underlined in your Bible, you should do that for his great namesake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself. Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you. And I will instruct you in the good and the right way only here it is again, a summary fear the Lord, serve him faithfully with all your heart for consider what great things he has done for you. But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king. All right. I would like to summarize this chapter, this speech by Samuel by pointing out just the end part of his speech here and what we see, the emphasis that we see. So I'll put it on the screen. I put the number of times, the repetitions here that Samuel is saying, do not turn aside. Do not rebel two times against the commandment of the Lord. Fear the Lord twice, obey the Lord twice, obey his voice and serve the Lord. He says three times, two of those times with all your heart. And I want to camp on that phrase with all your heart. I think we're intended to hear that and hold, keep that intention as we move on into Saul's life. So what does it mean? What does with all your heart mean? Who I'm talking about us now, who or what has your heart, who or what rules your heart? Does the Lord indeed rule? your heart so that the effect is wanting to serve him? Or does fear rule your heart? Fear of people, fear of disapproval, fear of failure, fear of not having enough? Or does pride rule your heart in a self-sufficiency? I am self-sufficient. I will do what I wanna do when I want to do it. I will bless myself. It is very easy for us to say, I will obey. I will serve the Lord. I will follow the Lord. That's the intention of my heart. It's very easy to say. But it's very easy for things to trump the intention of my heart. Suddenly or over time, something comes in that is stronger than the intention of my heart. Things like fear, things like pride, things like people, things like circumstances. And that is what happens next in Saul's heart. So we move to chapter 13. In your study guide on page 50, we dealt with some of the dating references there to Saul's reign. I'm just gonna summarize some of this early part. We learned that Jonathan was now in the mix, in the military mix. We learned that he actually attacked a garrison of the Philistines, and that Israel was told that Saul had attacked a garrison of the Philistines, which may have meant him taking credit, or may have just been like, he's the leader. You know how like we'll say, we'll use the name of our president to say that our nation does something, you know? Or Saul may have been purposely protecting his son, because this was not a smart thing to do. This was the proverbial poking the bear. And it created a situation, now that the Philistines wanted to retaliate, and they had way more resources. The Philistines had a corner on the market of iron, and all that sort of thing, and they had chariots. And in the ESV, it says there was, I think, three, 30,000, some of the other texts that come from other Hebrew translations, say 3,000, which might have been more appropriate to the 6,000 horsemen. However, it doesn't matter, it's a lot. And the point is, we learned from the early days of the book of Judges, that iron chariots were the button that got Israel to fear. Do you know that we all have a button? We all have something that brings up fear in our lives. For some women, it's a health issue. Like something is different in your body, and right away, we're like, uh-oh, uh-oh, I gotta pay attention to this. For some women, it's finances. For Israel, it was chariots. Iron chariots were just, tipped them over the edge, and that's what they were facing here. So, verse six, this is where we pick up now. Chapter 13, when the men of Israel saw that they were in trouble, and they were, the people hid themselves in caves, and in holes, and in rocks, and in tombs, and in cisterns. And some Hebrews crossed the fords of the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. Saul was still at Gilgal, and all the people followed him, trembling. Now, in reality, what is facing them right now is no more dire than battle A, from two weeks ago, or battle B, from our previous lesson, or Nahash. It was just the stinking chariots that got them so upset. But they were in trouble, and when you're in trouble, it's time to seek the Lord, and that's what Saul did. He went to seek the Lord. Now, before we move on to verse eight, last week, when we were in chapter 10, I told you we got to verse eight in chapter 10, and I said, let's just swipe that away, and hold on to that. Well, now we're gonna swipe it back. So, I'm actually going back to chapter 10 to read something from verse eight. This follows when Samuel had told Saul, do whatever your hand finds to do, God is with you. And then he said these words. Go down ahead of me to Gilgal. I will surely come down to you to sacrifice burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, but you must wait seven days until I come to you and tell you what you are to do. Now, some Bible scholars think that that was an open-ended directive, like whenever you're in trouble, this is what we're gonna do. I'll meet you at Gilgal. You gotta wait for me seven days. We'll sacrifice together. I am the prophet after all. You might be the king, but I'm still the prophet. God speaks to man through me. I will tell you what to do, okay? I think I'm in agreement with that. I think that this was an open-ended way to hear for the king to hear from the Lord. All right, now let's go back to chapter 13, verse eight, and we'll find out what Saul is doing. He waited seven days, the time appointed by Samuel, but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the people were scattering from him. Now, in all empathy to Saul in this moment, seven days is a long time to keep a sturdy heart. If you've had to wait for medical results for seven days, you know how hard it is to just keep a sturdy heart about that. So I can empathize with him. Verse nine, so Saul said, bring the burnt offering here to me and the peace offerings, and he offered the burnt offering, and as soon as he had finished offering the burnt offering, Samuel came and Saul went out to meet him and greet him. Samuel said, what have you done? And we know Saul knows he did wrong because he immediately, he didn't say, well, I don't know, what did I do wrong? He immediately began to offer excuses. He knew it was wrong. And so here's the three excuses that I see here. Saul says, when I saw that the people were scattering from me, in other words, I'm afraid of losing what I still do have. And when you did not come in the days appointed, although Samuel did, Saul just did not wait the last few moments long enough, but what the blame there is being shifted to Samuel. It's your fault. And the Philistines had mustered at Michmash. In other words, they're close. I can smell their breath. They were very close. Verse 12, I said, now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I've not sought the favor of the Lord. So I forced myself and I offered the burnt offering. It's a very sad passage. Saul knew full well that the offering was not king work. It was priest work. In fear, he believed he could not wait a moment longer. And in pride, he believed he could just go ahead and do what needed to be done. So through the lens of a military man, this sacrifice seems to have been nothing more than let's just do this ritual and get it done so we can move on and I can do the next thing. But through the lens of a prophet and a priest, this meant submission to the Lord, consecration to the Lord, waiting on the Lord. Now, I think we're meant to consider here the intentions of the heart because Samuel is about to talk about the intentions of the heart. Let's see what Samuel says. Verse 13, he said to Saul, you have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the Lord, your God, with which he commanded you. For then the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever, but now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and the Lord has commanded him to be prince over his people because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you. Wow, four references there to the command of the Lord, to obeying the Lord. The coming king must have a heart for God so that he can lead people to love God, to obey God, to serve God. Saul could have been that king. Samuel had just laid out these conditions in the previous chapter that we had talked about. Samuel had just said, if you fear the Lord, if you serve him, if you obey his voice and not rebel and follow the Lord, it will be well. Again, Saul could have confirmed himself as a man after God's own heart, but he didn't. Saul could have repented in this moment and been restored by the Lord, but he didn't. And this gives us some insight into what might otherwise seem like harsh consequences for this, that God sees the heart when we can't. God could see that Saul's heart was leaning into fear, leaning into pride, but worse than both of those things, that Saul's heart was unwilling to respond, unwilling to repent. And we can fall into the same trap, which we'll talk about in a minute, but first I just want to finish the chapter. Verse 15, Samuel rose and went from there to Gilgal. The rest of the people went up after Saul to meet the army. They went up from Gilgal. to Gibeah of Benjamin, and Saul numbered the people who were present with them, about 600 men. That's all that's left. And then to summarize the end of this chapter, this threat of war with all the iron chariots that had gotten them so worked up, fizzled out to relatively nothing. A few raiding parties that went out to outlying villages, which for those people is a problem for sure, but it's not, this isn't a war. It didn't end up being a war. So we end with the reminder that the Philistines have the monopoly on technology, on iron, agricultural implements. And on verse 22, so on the day of the battle, there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people with Saul and Jonathan. But Saul and Jonathan, his son, had them. And the garrison of the Philistines went out to the pass of Michmash, which is only about two miles from Gibeah. And that sets up the drama for the next chapter. So I wanna close this chapter by bringing home lessons for us from this chapter. Now, a mistaken lesson from this chapter would be to read this and say, see, I knew it. God is just waiting for me to do one wrong thing and he's gonna cut me off and cut off all of my blessings. That is not what we are to learn from this. So let's move on to see what we are to learn from this. How easy it is for fear or pride or a number of other things to step in and trample over the intentions of our heart. Maybe you've all experienced this like I have. You go to a retreat or you hear a message. I can remember doing this since I was a little girl. The spirit would stir me up and I'd say, I wanna live for God. I wanna serve him. This is great. I'm going to do this and the intentions of my heart are all in place. But then you know what happens. You start walking through life and something comes along that's stronger than the intentions of your heart and meddles with your intentions. That is, I think, what we are to look at here. So let's look again through Saul's excuses, what dismantled the intentions of his heart. Saul was losing soldiers. He was afraid of losing what he did have. Oh, that's a thing for us. We might say, I might lose my job. I might lose what I have if I, in fact, honor God here, if I, in fact, obey him. Saul blamed Samuel and we can do the same thing. It's like, I could honor God if it wasn't for these kids. They're the ones that get me all riled up and make me do things that I don't wanna do. Or I could serve the Lord, but that husband of mine. Or on and on. We can cast blame to something else in the same way that Saul did. And Saul was afraid of the enemy at his doorstep, the breath that he could almost smell there. And also we might fear that and say, I could honor God if it wasn't for this thing that's going to drown me. I've got to get out. I've got to remedy this because it's gonna sweep over me. So the first lesson is that this is a sober reminder to us that our intentions to follow God will be challenged by everyday life. We can expect it. We should expect it. And we should not sink, thinking that why can't I serve God? Everyday life comes upon all of us. But the biggest lesson, I think, is that when we do fail, when something comes and trumps the intention of our heart to serve God, we have a remedy and it's called repentance. We could just admit it and it stems from a humble heart. And we could say, you're right. I'm using that as an excuse. That's not what I should do. Help me turn the other way. We're now familiar with this phrase, a man after God's own heart, okay? We know that the coming king, the next coming king, David, was a man after God's own heart. What happened to the intentions of his heart? They were troubled. He sinned. He let some things get under his skin so that he didn't follow through the intentions of his heart. Pride, fear, whatever it was, he could have blamed Bathsheba. Well, if she hadn't been bathing over there, he went through the same things. But here's the difference between Saul and David. When confronted with the information, what did our next king do? He repented. He was broken. He said, you're right. And so God established him and maintained. So this isn't a matter of living a perfect life. This is a matter of a soft heart that hears the Lord speak to you and says, that wasn't what I had for you. You go, you are right. I'm gonna turn the other way. And that's what our next king will do. But that is not what Saul did. And he's beginning right now to confirm himself in pride and in fear. And we're gonna have to walk through the rest of his life seeing this play out. I just wanna end with a passage that we often, I end up often using in some of our Bible studies, Isaiah 30, chapter 15. This is from the NIV.

So we'll close with that. Father, we thank you that you have given us an avenue to always reestablish our hearts before you. Lord, I'll bet every woman in this room has the intention to serve you, to love you, to honor you. We all have the same intentions of our hearts and we all face the same things that come against those intentions and give us problems. And Lord, sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. But Lord, I pray that you would help every single one of us to be soft hearted when something comes in to trump our desire to obey you, that we will change our ways, that we will admit it before you. We will change and we will once again walk with you. Lord, you are a God of restoration and we just thank you so much for that. And we just thank you for our time. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.