1 Samuel 21-22
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning, my name's Chet, I'm one of the pastors here. If you will grab your Bible and go to First Samuel, chapter 21. We're going to be in chapters 21 and 22 today. We're looking through both of those chapters.
When I was growing up, probably three to five, I think I watched Mary Poppins 42,000 times. I'm pretty sure that we only had like a handful of VHS that my grandmother had recorded from her television. So I also have a lot of commercials really, really memorized. But I watched that on a regular basis. And there's this scene towards the end of the movie where the children had been in a bank and there was some bank trouble. And I don't want to get into a whole discussion of finance, but they had to run out of the bank and they get lost in London. And thus begins a series of back to back to back to back moments that were utterly terrifying to me.
It was like they took all the vulnerabilities of a four year old and just pummeled them. So they're lost in a city. Terrifying. Just not knowing where your parents are for like 12 seconds when you're four and five is scary. They're running through a city. This is, you know, it's awful. Then they come around a corner in an alleyway and an old lady pops out and goes, come with me, children. And it's like, why would she do that? And you don't know if she was intending to be helpful. They run away. She seemed scary. So they take off. Then they come around a corner and a dog jumps out and starts barking aggressively at them. When you're a child, a dog is the size of a bear. Like, I mean, you know. Then they turn and they run and they go down an alleyway and a shadowy figure grabs them. Turns out that that's their friend, but you don't know it at the time.
I just remember like this seared in my brain, this series of events. And I remember even as a little kid, like, I'm pretty sure there were times where I just stopped watching the movie before that I was like, well, let's move on. I know they make it at the. And I think there were other times where I just left the room and like waited till I heard the song start back up, you know, because it's a children's movie where things are supposed to be happy. And then I returned, but it was really this interesting peek into things that made me feel very vulnerable and very alone. And this real dive into fears that I had.
As we're reading through this text today, we're going to see how Saul, David and a handful of other people deal with fear. What it does to them, where it takes them. There's a reality to fear, that it drives us towards something, towards someone, it exposes us in a way. And so what I hope we see in this text is we're going to see them as they interact with it. They're going to see how they handle it. And what I hope we'll learn together is the scariest place to be and the safest place to be as we study this text together.
So let's pray quickly for us and then we'll move into chapter 21 of First Samuel. Lord, we ask for your help. We ask for your Spirit to speak in a way that we can understand, that you would help us to deal with our fears and to see what fear does to us in a way that draws us to you. In Jesus name, amen.
So David's on the run. Saul wants to kill him. Saul's the king. David was very close to Saul, was a general, was his bodyguard, was all these different things. And he's now having to flee for his life. And that's what we saw last week as Jonathan, Saul's son, helped David escape.
Chapter 21.
Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. So he goes to Nob, and we're going to find out that Nob is a whole city of priests. It seems as if after everything, after Shiloh was destroyed and the ark was taken, they get the ark back, and it seems like now the center of the priesthood is here. It's unclear whether the ark is also here, but the priests are. And this is where priestly activities will be taking place for the people of Israel, the sacrifices and all that.
So he goes there to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David, trembling, and said to him,
"Why are you alone and no one with you?"
So it's odd for David to be by himself. Ahimelech knows David, but David usually has like a whole crew. He's either with the king, he's with his military units that he's overseeing. For David just to show up is what business does he have? Did something terrible happen? What's going on?
So he comes out, that's why he's trembling. And he says, what? What's going on? And David said to Ahimelech, the priest,
"The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, 'Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you and with which I have charged you.' And I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here."
So David just says, secret king business. And I've got some people that I'm definitely meeting who are real at a very specific place that you can't know about, and I need bread. None of that is true, except for that David wants bread, but he's on the run and he is just trying to get out of here.
And the priest answered, David,
"I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread if the young men have kept themselves from women,"
which just has to do with sexual activity, makes you unclean in the law. So that's what that is. It's not just like women, some mean thing about them. It just has to do with sexual activity.
David answered the priest,
"Truly, women have been kept from us. As always, when I go on an expedition, the vessels of the young men are holy, even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?"
So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there, but the bread of the Presence which is removed from before the Lord to be replaced by hot bread on the day that it is taken away.
So the tabernacle seems to be here, the bread of the Presence is here. They would set it out on the Sabbath before the Lord as a picture of the meal, the connection, the communion that we have with the Lord, that they have with the Lord. And then they would rotate it out on the Sabbath. And the old loaves were allowed to be eaten by the priests. And Ahimelech breaks that rule to give to David in a time of need.
Jesus references this and says that he did right, that this was correct to do, to break a ceremonial law for the sake of caring for someone. And he says this in this argument with the Pharisees about the Sabbath, saying that some things were built for our good and our blessing, and therefore, if there's opposition, we can bless others in those moments. And that's what he's talking about.
So David takes that bread and he now has five loaves of bread that was the bread of the Presence, but the priest is allowing him to have it.
Verse 7.
Now, a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord. His name was Doeg, the Edomite, the chief of Saul's herdsmen, he's detained before the Lord. It may be a Sabbath if they've just swapped the bread out. So it's possible he wasn't allowed to travel very long. It's also possible he's doing some sort of thing because he's an Edomite to become a follower of God. It's also possible that he has some sort of sickness or skin disease and he's having to be watched because there's all these. These are several of the reasons why you might be detained before the Lord. He could also just be there doing some, basically, some holy days for himself as he worships the Lord.
But that's it. That's all it tells us about him. It just in the middle of this story goes, hey, Doeg, the Edomite is here. And it's going to go right back to the story. And that's foreshadowing. So remember him, he'll show up later, but he doesn't do anything here.
Verse 8.
Then David said to Ahimelech,
"Then have you not here a spear or a sword at hand? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me because the king's business required haste."
And the priest said,
"The sword of Goliath, the Philistine, whom you struck down in the Valley of Elah. Behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the Ephod, if you will. Take that, take it, for there's none but that here."
And David said,
"There is none like that. Give it to me."
So David says, I was in such a hurry, I don't even have any weapons. Do you have any weapons? He says, you gave us Goliath's sword. It's still here. And David says, great, that sword is awesome. I will take it. And so he has a nice, probably fairly large sword that he leaves with.
Verse 10.
And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish, the king of Gath.
Okay, David doesn't have any options. That's what this just told us. The plan that he's come up with is, I'm going to show up to Gath with Goliath of Gath's sword and see how that goes. It seems like he's intending to maybe be like a mercenary. He's just going to go there and serve there. He's absolutely on the run from his home, his people, his everything.
And the servants of Achish said to him, to Achish,
"Is not this David, the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances? Saul has struck down his thousands and David his ten thousands."
So if David was planning on being undercover, he shows up and they're like, mmm. And they go to the king and they're like, I'm pretty sure they have a song about how good he is at murdering us. I'm pretty sure that's him.
And David took those words, these words to heart. So he somehow overheard this. In this situation, was much afraid of Achish, the king of Gath. So he changed his behavior before them, pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard.
So somehow, on his way before the king, he just starts acting insane, drooling, marking up the walls. That's the best disguise he can come up with on the fly, you guys. And it works.
Then Achish said to his servants,
"Behold, you see, the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack mad men that you've brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?"
So they're like, hey, we've got David. And then he goes, you brought a crazy person here. Thank you so much. Did you think that was what I really needed? I needed those.
Some of y'all like to memorize verses for specific situations that you can remind, you know, rehearse yourself or say to other people. Maybe this one for, like, when your family's coming over for vacation or something, or your in-laws are coming and you can just quote to your spouse,
"Do we lack mad men in their house? Are we gonna let this fellow in just for y'all?"
Bible memorization, you're welcome. Probably won't be one of our monthly verses, but it's a good one.
All right, chapter 22.
David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam.
So David then leaves. He heads back over into Israelite territory and hides in King Achish's. So his plan to go to Gath does not work and he escapes. Now, an interesting thing happens as we get to follow this story and as we have the whole revelation of the Scriptures, because this text doesn't tell us a lot of what's going on with David, what he's thinking. We just hear what he's doing. We hear some of what he says, but we don't get to see what's going on with him.
And so far, in the midst of fear, he's just run and he's come up with what arguably is an ill-advised plan to run to Gath. But that's all he comes up with. He ends up in this cave. But in the book of Psalms we have songs and poems and worship that David writes. And there's one that has this inscription above it. It says, this is Psalm 34. It says of David when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out and he went away.
Now this text calls him Achish, which seems to be a title, and Abimelech seems to be his name. So like if you said he was in front of Caesar and then later it says Nero, it's the same guy. So Achish and Abimelech.
So we actually get to hear what, how David responds after this moment when he gets to escape. And so it seems like he wrote this while in the cave or on his way to it. He starts off in the first four verses, worshiping, praising. He says,
"I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them."
So he says, I had fear and he rescued me. And those who fear the Lord he protects. So David's interaction with fear is shifting here. He's saying, in my fear I began to go to the Lord, and now I fear him. He's the most fearful, so he's been on the run. It doesn't seem like he's handled everything so well so far. But now, as everything slows down, as he's trying to process through this, and he's worshiping the Lord for rescuing him out of Gath, this is what he's writing.
Verse 8,
"Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack."
He keeps going.
Verse 18,
"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit."
In verse 22 he says,
"The Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned."
This is how he ends it. So he says, I'm hiding in him. I'm taking refuge in him. My hope is in him. That's David as he deals with this fear.
So chapter 22, let's pick back up in the text.
David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him.
David on the run, hiding in a cave, trying to figure out what he's going to do, trying to lay low, writing some songs from his expert hiding place. He looks out one day, keeping a good lookout, and he's like, mom.
Because his whole family shows up. They all come to him, which makes sense. And maybe he had to go out for supplies. Maybe word spreads at some point where David is, but his whole family comes to him, which makes sense, because if David's on the run from Saul, they're probably not that safe from Saul. And Saul may go look to them to find David.
So they all go to David. Then it says this.
"And everyone who was in distress and everyone who was in debt and everyone who was bitter in soul gathered to him. And he became commander over them. And there were with him about 400 men."
So his mom, his brothers, his dad, they all show up. Then other people just start showing up. And it's like, why are you here? I am stressed beyond belief. Everything out there is terrible. I heard David was in a cave, and I thought, I'm gonna go get in that cave. Somebody else shows up. Why are you here? I owe so many people so much money. Cave started sounding pretty good. Everyone who's bitter in soul, so the most frustrated, angry people who are, they're not going to read, they're not going to vote for Saul when reelection time comes back around like, this hasn't worked for them. That's who's showing up to David. And then it says he becomes commander of them. So they showed up and they were like, everything is awful. And he's like, okay, do some push ups. It's time to start training. I guess y'all are gonna have to listen to what I say if you're hanging out in my cave. And they do. So now he has 400 distressed, bitter in soul people who owe a lot of money to other people. They're all with David now, plus his mom and his brothers and his dad, okay?
And David went from there to Mizpah of Moab. So now he leaves again. He takes all these people with him, it seems. And he said to the king of Moab,
"Please let my father and my mother stay with you till I know what God will do for me."
And he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him all the time that David was in the stronghold.
So reading some commentaries on this, there was a couple of different ideas as to why the king of Moab would let him do that. Some of the things they put out were housing fugitives because the Moabites were enemies of the Israelites. So the king to house fugitives that are against Saul seems like maybe that's a good idea.
There's also just a general cultural thing of hospitality. So it's possible they're just doing what their culture does, which is show hospitality in these sort of situations.
There's a theory that it's possible that one of the reasons they went to Moab was that Jesse is the grandson of Ruth, who was from Moab. So there's some family connection here.
And I've come up with my own theory, which is that David showed up with 400 desperate men and said, hey, will you watch my mom? And they were like, sure. You and your friends gonna leave? He's like, we're gonna hang out a little bit, but just keep an eye on them until we figure out what's gonna happen.
So any one of those is possible as to why they've said yes to this, but they do say yes to this. David leaves his parents with the king of Moab, and he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him all the time that David was in the stronghold.
Then the prophet Gad said to David,
"Do not remain in the stronghold. Depart and go into the land of Judah."
So he says, we're not going to stay in Moab. The Lord wants you to go back to Judah. And he does. And we're going to see Gad show up periodically through the story of David.
So David departed and went to the forest of Heref.
Now the story is going to shift to Saul. So we've seen David dealing with fear. We've seen him on the run, and we've seen him as this process is happening, growing in worship and saying, he's going to trust in the Lord.
And now we're going to see Saul as he deals with fear.
Verse 6.
Now, Saul heard that David was discovered and the men who were with him.
If you're playing hide and seek and someone finds you, you may not have had the best hiding spot. If your entire family finds you, plus 400 strangers, you don't have a good hiding spot.
So David now is discovered. They know he's out. They know kind of where he is. And he's got 400 people traveling around with him. And this news makes it to Saul. So he's no longer incognito. He's known.
Saul was sitting at Gibeah under the tamarisk tree on the height with his spear in his hand. And all his servants were standing about him, which first of all, of course he has a spear in his hand. He seems to always be holding a spear. But also what is happening in this text, it says he was sitting at Gibeah under the tamarisk tree on the height with his spear. And all his servants, all of those things are markers of leadership and kingship. That you would sit under an obvious tree, they would hold court there, they would answer questions there, they would judge there that he's on a height, that he's got servants, that he's holding his spear. So in some ways this text says Saul the king was out kinging in a very kingly way. That's kind of what that text is doing. It's building him up as much like he's super kinging. Right now. We got David hiding in a cave, wandering around other places, trying to figure out what he's going to do, hiding in a forest. And now we've got Saul, the kingiest king that ever did king.
And Saul said to his servants who stood about him here now,
"People of Benjamin."
Okay, that's interesting. Benjamin is the tribe that Saul is from. He's been king for a long time. He's been king over all of Israel for a long time. It's possible that he only always has kept just Benjaminites the closest to him. Or as he's grown more and more paranoid and more and more fearful, he's gotten rid of everybody who doesn't belong to his tribe and now has perfectly surrounded himself with Benjaminites. But either way, he's paranoid and fearful.
And we're going to hear from his speech how far that goes.
But these are only people from his clan. He's suspicious, fearful.
"Hear now, people of Benjamin, will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards? Will he make you all commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, that all of you have conspired against me?"
So he stands there and says, you just are so certain that David's gonna bless all of you, that he's gonna care for all of you, that you're all gonna be so important when he becomes king, that you've all conspired against me? And that's not true. But he now doubts everyone that's around him.
Still, in verse 8, he says,
"No one discloses to me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse. None of you is sorry for me or discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servant against me to lie in wait, as at this day."
He is correct that Jonathan did make a covenant with David, but it was because they loved one another. It was a covenant of friendship to care for one another. They make a covenant that they're not going to harm each other. And Jonathan goes out of his way to keep his dad from sinning against David.
But he is not helping David lie in wait against Saul.
David isn't lying in wait against Saul. David's not out to get Saul. Saul's out to get David. Saul is actually not in danger, not from David, but he thinks he is. And he's saying, everyone's against me.
And Saul's entire world has shrunk to just him. It's just him. Everybody's an enemy. Everybody's in on it. Everything's a secret. Everything's falling apart.
Then answered Doeg, the Edomite, who stood by the servants of Saul,
"I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob to Ahimelech the son of Ahitub, and he inquired of the Lord for him and gave him provisions and gave him the sword of Goliath the Philistine."
We actually don't know if he inquired of the Lord from him. Our text doesn't tell us that. But Doeg says he did. But that's something you do before military stuff. He doesn't say he gave him five loaves of bread. He calls it provisions, just militarizing it up a little bit. And he gives him a sword. He basically says, hey, Ahimelech's in on it.
Then the king sent to summon Ahimelech the priest, the son of Ahitub and all his father's house. The priests who were at Nob and all of them came to the king. It would have taken a couple miles away, so to go get them to come back. This took a couple hours, but they all come.
And Saul said,
"Hear now, son of Ahitub?"
And he answered,
"Here I am, my lord."
And Saul said to him,
"Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread and a sword and have inquired of God for him, so that he has risen against me to lie in wait as at this day?"
Then Ahimelech answered the king,
"And who among all your servants is as faithful as David, who is the king's son-in-law and captain over your bodyguard and honored in your house? Is today the first time that I have inquired of God for him? No. Let not the king impute anything to his servant or to all the house of my father, for your servant has known nothing of this, of all of this. Much or little."
So Ahimelech just says, it's David. David, your bodyguard, your son-in-law. I've done this. I do this. I would do this for him anytime he comes. I'm not in on something. I didn't know any of this. Don't add that to me. Don't add that to my family. That's not the case.
Aside from those noises, that's what he said. He may have said it really calmly, I don't know, but he just kind of lists out like five things in a row where he's just like, I didn't have anything to do with anything, and this is normal for me to do whatever David asks.
Verse 16.
And the king said,
"You shall surely die, Ahimelech. You and all your father's house."
And the king said to the guard who stood about him,
"Turn and kill the priests of the Lord, because their hand also is with David. They knew that he fled and did not disclose it to me."
But the servants of the king would not put out their hand to strike the priests of the Lord.
You got to hear the sentence that Saul said. He looks at his servants and says, that's it. Kill all the priests of the Lord because they're on David's team. Priests of the Lord. They're on David's team.
And then I don't know if y'all can see the fear and the frustration. And Saul's face turned purple as all of his soldiers are just like, nope, I'm not.
I love his soldiers in this moment because they all know there's going to be a day I stand before the Lord and it won't be Saul. There's a day that I will stand before my king and it isn't Saul. And I'm not going on record as killing a priest, it's not happening. You can kill me. That's fine. Then I'll go stand before the Lord and go, do you see me not kill that priest? Do you see what I just died for? Like, they just don't move.
And again, I'm sure this just confirms in Saul that everyone is against him. His whole world has shrunk down to his center of gravity and Doeg.
Then the king said to Doeg,
"You turn and strike down the priests."
And Doeg, the Edomite turned and struck down the priests. And he killed on that day 85 persons who wore the linen ephod. Doeg is an Edomite. He doesn't care.
So he kills them, 85 of them. They brought all the males from that household. They kill all of them. And Nob, the city of the priests, he put to the sword both man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey and sheep. He put to the sword.
Saul does to the city of the priests what he was not willing to do to the Amalekites when it was for the Lord and it was holy war, he was unwilling to do it. When it's for him and it's his trying to keep his seat of power, he's willing to.
Verse 20.
But one of the sons of Ahimelech, the son of Ahitub, named Abiathar, escaped and fled to David.
Alright, so something very interesting has happened in this passage.
In chapter two, a man of God comes to Eli and says the priesthood is not going to stay with your family because you've dishonored me. He says they're going to be wiped out. There will only be left one who will cry his eyes out. That's what just happened. Abiathar is that one.
And eventually it's taken from him. He doesn't get to carry on serving the Lord. So the curse of God is poured out on this family through the wicked choices of Saul.
So Saul is very wrong to do what he does. But we also see the hand of God at work in fulfilling his promises. It's a very interesting thing that happens here. But it doesn't mean that Saul's right to do what he does. It just means that when God says something, it happens.
And Abiathar told David that Saul had killed the priests of the Lord.
And David said to Abiathar,
"I knew on that day when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul, I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father's house."
David's response is, that's on me. While David was on the run, while David was doing what he did, he said, I knew that. I knew he was going to tell him. And I don't know if David fully understood what was going to come from that. I don't see how he could have. But he just says, yeah, that's. I'm the one to blame for this.
Verse 21,
"Stay with me. Do not be afraid for he who seeks my life seeks your life with me. You shall be in safekeeping."
So that's his response to Abiathar.
There's a very interesting call it a social phenomenon that's happening in this text. But everybody who's absolutely desperate is going to David. If everything has fallen apart, if you have no hope of a future, if everything has fallen around your ears, they go to David.
And I can't help but see that and see that that's exactly what happens in the New Testament with Jesus. That when Jesus is on earth, the people who flock to him are the poor, the destitute, the sinners, the weak, the small, the outcasts.
This actually is one of the things that he and the religious leaders get into arguments over all the time. They're like, you hang out with absolute human garbage. And Jesus is like, right, because the sick need a physician, not the well.
And there's this thing where if you really know that you're in need, you start looking for somewhere to go, some bit of hope, someone to run to.
And so we see in this story as it plays out that you have fear, legitimate, real, terrible fear, actual bad things.
And David, as we follow this out, he runs to the Lord and there's all of these people that run to David. And then there's Saul who tries to handle everything in his own strength.
And I told you earlier that we would see. I'm trying to tell you the scariest place to be.
The scariest place to be is where you are the biggest person in the world.
The scariest place to be is where you are utterly, completely, absolutely self-sufficient.
The scariest place to be is where the center of existence has boiled down to your center of gravity, where it's all up to you.
That's where Saul is.
Trust, no one believes, no one hopes in nothing, just whatever he can tooth and nail and claw and grab, whatever he can get done, all up to him.
And I don't know if you know it, but that's what our culture has told you over and over again is what you need to go do.
Express yourself, find yourself, succeed, accomplish, win, earn.
It's up to you.
The most powerful snowflake in the world that you've got to on your own. Be sufficient, be capable, be good.
That's what religion shows up and tells you so often is be good, be moral, do it. It's up to you.
That's terrifying.
The guards around Saul know something that we need to know is that one day you're going to stand before the real Lord, the real King.
And on that day you do not want to stand in yourself self-sufficient.
You do not want to stand before the King and say, judge me, evaluate me, I am big enough, I am good enough, I am capable.
That's terrifying.
You don't want to live your life that way.
And you certainly don't want to end your life that way.
We get to do with Jesus what Abiathar does with David and we get to have the same response.
We get to run to him and say, I have no hope anywhere but with you.
And what David says to Abiathar is what Jesus says to us.
Your life is connected to my life and with me you'll be in safekeeping.
That we get to hide ourselves in Christ.
That when he died for sins, he died for us.
That when he was buried, we were buried.
When he rose, we rise.
We get to be hidden in Christ and what he has accomplished.
And we get to stand before the Lord in Christ and not in ourselves and not in our sufficiency.
But we get to say, I have hidden in him.
And no one is put to shame who takes refuge in the Lord.
David prophetically says it at the end of his psalm.
"The Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned."
And then we get to live like that in all the fears of life.
You get to go to the Lord. You get to do what David did. He's in the, he's in the cave and he's rehearsing.
You know how long it takes to write a song? It's possible that this just came out, but I think a lot of it is he's working on, he's rehearsing, he's remembering and he's reminding himself over and over and over and over again.
My hope is in you. My trust is in you. I have no good apart from you.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.
Nobody who is condemned, who places their hope in you.
Nobody who runs to you in refuge, oh, let me hide in you.
Over and over and over and over again.
And then we get to do the same thing that we don't in the middle of fear go, I must act, I've got to do something.
But we get to in the middle of the fear go, okay Lord, if you don't help, I'm in trouble. If you don't show up, I'm in trouble.
I see so often in my own sin. I'll talk to the Lord and I'll say, Lord, if you aren't merciful, if you don't forgive sinners, I have no hope.
But oh thank you that you do. And let me hide in you.
Let me. Let the righteousness of Christ be applied to me.
Let his life and death and burial apply to me.
Let me hide in him.
It's one of my favorite songs is Rock of Ages.
And just at the end it says,
"Let me hide myself in thee, let me hide in you."
And let it be about you.
And so if you've never seen that you actually are not capable enough, strong enough, good enough, if your whole world is about you and you still think you are strong enough, I would say no, come to the Lord.
But if you know you're in debt, in sin, you're destitute, you're distressed, you're bitter, come to the Lord, run to him and say, I need to hide in you.
And for the Christians in the room who are struggling with fear, rehearse for yourself what's true about him.
Start with Psalm 34.
Read it, pray it. Sit. Remind yourself my hope is bound up in you.
That's what Colossians 3 says,
"Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory."
We are hidden with him.
His life and our life, our life is bound up in him.
And with him we are in safe keeping.
Let's pray.
Lord, I pray right now in the name of Jesus, for every person in this room who is self-sufficient. For every person in this room who, when it all boils down, it's just them. Just them and their wisdom, just them and their morality, just them and their strength, just them and their ingenuity, that it's just them.
Lord, I pray that you would, through your Spirit, help them to see how small and how vulnerable and how scary that is, that they might run to you.
Lord, we pray for the person in this room who already sees that, who already feels debt, distress, destitute, desperate, that they would run headlong to you and say, oh, let your life cover me, let your righteousness apply to me. Let me hide myself in you.
And Lord, may the Christians in this room rehearse that over and over and over again. That in fear we might fear you more and know that no one is condemned who takes refuge in you.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
The band's going to come back up. We're going to respond in communion and worship.
1 Samuel 20
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. If you weren't here earlier, I said, my name is Spencer, I'm one of the pastors. We are going to be mostly in First Samuel, chapter 20 as we jump back into First Samuel. We took one break last week, but we're jumping right back in. But we're going to start in actually going back something we've already read back in chapter 18 today. Because what we're going to be seeing in chapter 20 is the friendship of Jonathan and David. But that really begins in 18. And I just wanted the first verse to kind of give us a preview of where we're going.
But in 18:1 it said as soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, this is David.
The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David. And Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
So this is after David kills Goliath, he sees Jonathan, Jonathan sees him and it says their soul was knit together. And this is the beginning of one of the most famous friendships in all of history. And it begins with two souls knit together in a deep, lasting friendship.
Now as we read this and as we follow the story today, there are parts of us that long for that, that long to have a friendship like this. But where we are kind of culturally, we're not set up well to understand this. I mean, there's lots of warning signs about this. You can look at statistics on this. They've measured kind of friendship and loneliness in America. The bigger problem actually is male friendship and male loneliness. So last year in 2024, they did a study that said that 26% of men reported having six or more close friends. Now back in 1990, that was 55%. So it just kind of shows that over time men are growing lonelier, don't have deep friendships with others like they used to. It's a problem for men and women.
They surveyed all adults. 12% of all adults say they have zero close friends. That 12% of all American adults don't have a friend at all. And we feel the difficulty of that. It gets more complicated, it seems, as you get older to keep friends. That at the end of the movie Stand by Me, a movie from the 80s that captures friendship amongst 12 year old boys, but at the very end he's an adult and he's reflecting back on that summer. And I'll clean up the quote a little bit because it's not appropriate, but he says, I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. Goodness, does anyone.
And it's just capturing, like, yeah, I mean, the type of you remember as a kid how innocent you jumped into friendships? I got a. My youngest, she meets everyone. She's like, I'm gonna be your best friend. Just jumps in immediately. And there's this depth you have that you begin to lose over time. And it begins to get more and more difficult.
One of the jokes that's been thrown around the last few years is that no one talks about the miracle of Jesus having 12 close friends in his 30s. And it's like there's some merit to that where it's just. It's difficult, friendships are difficult. But there's. As culture is seeing this, there's a problem here. There's an epidemic of loneliness, particularly in men. And there's all types of risks associated with this. There's risks to physical health, mental health, to all types of risk of suicide. There's this epidemic of loneliness that hits everyone, that hits men particularly the most.
And a problem for us as we approach this story is that we don't have categories to think about these two men and the closeness that they have culturally. The culture doesn't have a category for this without trying to think that something romantic is going on. And that is because closeness and friendship has even been over sexualized. I mean, years ago there was a very weak attempt to try to fabricate a romantic relationship between David and Jonathan. There's nothing in the text, there has never been anything in these stories to say that over 3,000 years of commentaries on this backs that up. There's nothing here. So that attempt, though weak, isn't around as much anymore. It certainly was agenda driven trying to legitimize homosexuality. But I think it's also symptomatic of a culture, especially amongst men, that cannot conceive of closeness amongst two men. That two men's souls being knit together is literally seen as God gay by our culture. And that's a problem. It's a problem that we can't conceive of nearness like this in men or women, but particularly a problem for men.
So what I'm hoping today is as we walk through this, we're going to view this friendship between David and Jonathan and we're going to see three essential aspects of what it means to be a godly friend. And then my hope is, is that as we learn from David and Jonathan, as we glean from this passage, that we would see where to find the purest form of friendship.
So let me pray and then we'll walk through this together. God, I pray that you give us ears to hear this certainly is not a neutral subject. There are folks here that are struggling in friendships right now. There are folks here that are longing for friendship, feeling lonely. God, I pray that you would speak to us this morning. And we respond as the church is supposed to, by loving you and obeying your word in Jesus name. Amen.
All right, so the verse one said as soon as going back to chapter 18, as soon as he had finished speaking to Saul,
The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David. And Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father's house. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David and his armor and even his sword and his bow and his belt.
Okay, so what we see from here and some examples here, but also the thread that gets pulled throughout this story is the first essential aspect of, of godly friendship. And that is that godly friendship is selfless. The godly friendship is selfless.
We see that Jonathan loves David, and we see later on that David loves Jonathan. It says their souls were knit together, that they kind of make this covenant of friendship. And one of the first things that Jonathan does is a seeing Jonathan seeing David and his soul as more valuable than his. So he loved him like it was his own soul. And then he gives up, says his robe and his armor and his sword and his bow and his belt, that he considers David as more important. He's selfless. He shows a deference here. And that's what godly friendship is. It's caring about your friend more than you do your own self.
But that is not what our culture values in friendship. Our culture doesn't see friendship that way. Our culture sees friendship mostly as back scratching. I scratch your back, but then you got to scratch my back. And if you don't scratch my back, we got a problem. We have an invisible scoreboard for friends in our lives that they have to keep up. They got to do the same. They got to be able to reciprocate. And if they don't, it's a problem. And what happens is when your friend is actually struggling, you're like, what have you done for me? I'm pouring myself out. What are you doing for me?
And there's certainly, listen, there certainly is some wisdom in not burning yourself out on fools. I mean, the Proverbs make that clear. They'll be friends of fools. So there's some wisdom in that. But I think largely what happens is, is that we've made friendship consumeristic. We've watched a lot of Seinfeld, a lot of Friends, a lot of How I Met Your Mother, a lot of shows that make friendship about fun and what they can be given to you and the fun they add to your life. And the moment that your friend is struggling and the moment that your friend is not as fun as they used to be, well, their utility has been used up and then we move on. That's what happens.
But we should look for friends that are selfless. And we should be a friend that is selfless. That's helpful when you go through seasons that are difficult. Last year in particular was not a fun year. This was not a fun year for me, not a fun year for my family. We just had a lot of difficulties and a lot of trials that we were working through. And I was so thankful to Jesus that I had friends that displayed this selflessness, that I had friends that would, at a moment's notice, drop everything and come and watch our children. I had friends that I knew prayed for us regularly. Like they didn't. Just like they didn't say they did, but they actually did it. Actually, I knew that they were regularly praying.
I had friends that would ask questions, difficult questions. I had friends that would embody Proverbs 27:6 that said,
Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy.
Meaning that good friends are willing to risk relational discomfort in wounding you temporarily for your ultimate good. To have friends that are willing to risk relational capital and make things difficult, to say difficult things to you because it's ultimately for your good, because they care more about you than do the comfort of friendship. We need that.
I was so thankful to God that I had that. And we should seek to be these types of friends like Jonathan, who was selfless.
One of the things that you see throughout this story is that as from this point forward, Jonathan begins to decrease and David begins to increase in favor. Going into chapter 20, you see that Jonathan, who was the son of King Saul, that they start to decrease and Jonathan and David grows in favor with the people. And not for a moment do you see Jonathan respond in selfishness and jealousy and envy of what his friend is getting.
That's wonderful.
One of the things I appreciate about Chet Phillips, which let me give a caveat here, what I'm about to say is something actually really genuine about our friendship. Because I know if you've been here long enough, you know, we poke fun at each other a lot. We burn each other. That's what we do. He preaches, he makes fun of me. I preach, I make fun of him. We're savage towards each other. It's part of our love language.
I'm not going to comment on how he gives awkward hugs. I'm not going to comment on how his face is naturally very angry looking. Looks like the kind of dad that would yell at the refs at a youth football game. I'm not going to say any of that. What I'm about to say is actually quite genuine.
That I appreciate about our friendship is that he is not jealous. There are times where God has blessed me and he's eager to know about it. And he digs. He says, no, no, no, no, tell me more about him. I was like, well, I mean, you know, this happened and that was good. And this happened and that was good. And some folks when you share with, sometimes you're like, you can tell. They're like, oh, I'm so happy for you. It's so good. I'm so glad that God has blessed you. And you're like, okay, I'm gonna reel it back in a little bit.
But with him, he just says, no, tell me more. I want to know. I want to be able to, I want to be joyful when God has blessed you. And that's selflessness. And I appreciate that about the friendship that we have. And that's what Jonathan is to David. As David increases in favor, Jonathan is not envious. He's not clinging to favor of the people, but he's selfless towards David.
Now we're through chapter 19. We saw that Jonathan's father, Saul, King Saul, is trying to kill David over and over again. And then finally we saw at the end of chapter 19 where Saul comes to boldly kill David at the feet of the prophet Samuel. And that God defends David with prophecy, that Saul is stricken with prophecy, prophetic praise. That's how chapter 19 ended.
Years have gone by at this point and Saul is growing in rage towards David. David. And now it's very clear that Saul has it out completely for David. Everybody knows it. And the friendship of Jonathan and David is really being tested in chapter 20 as his rage has been unrelenting. And there's this wonder, did Saul actually, was he changed by God when he was prophesying? Or does he still want David dead? And David thinks, absolutely, he still wants me dead.
So we pick up in verse one of chapter 20, it says,
Then David fled from Naioth at Ramah and came and said before Jonathan, "What have I done? What is my guilt and what is my sin before your father that he seeks my life?" And he said to him, "Far from it! You shall not die. Behold, my father does nothing either great or small without disclosing it to me. And why should my father hide this from me? It is not so." But David vowed again, saying, "Your father knows well that I have found favor in your eyes." And he thought, "Do not let Jonathan know this, lest he be grieved." But truly, as the Lord lives and as your soul lives, there is but a step between me and death."
David's like, your dad wants to kill me. No, really, he wants to kill me. And Jonathan's like, no, no. And then David's like, no, you don't understand. He's trying to. He's still trying to kill me. And Jonathan's like, don't you know that if I find out about this, I'm gonna let you know? And David's like, yeah, but your father knows. He knows of our friendship. He knows of our love for one another. He's gonna hide this from you.
And David, you can tell how distressed he is. And he's like, I'm a step away from death. And then Jonathan hears all this and he says,
Then Jonathan said to David, "Whatever you say, I will do for you."
Okay, whatever you say, I'll do for you. Which again highlights the selflessness of Jonathan. All right, I hear you. I'm listening. What can I do?
Verse 5.
David said to Jonathan, "Behold, tomorrow is the new moon, and I should not fail to sit at the table with the king. But let me go, that I may hide myself in the field to the third day at evening. If your father misses me at all, then say, 'David earnestly asked leave of me to run to Bethlehem, his city, for there is a yearly sacrifice there for all the clan.' If he says, 'Good,' it will be well with your servant. But if he is angry, then know that harm is determined by him."
So David comes up with a plan. They're going to test the wrath of Saul. He says, I'm not going to show up to the new moon festival. This is a time of festivities where they would make sacrifices to the Lord. He was expected to attend as being a part of the king's court. And he says, if I don't show up and your father is okay with it, we'll know that his wrath has subsided and I can come back. But if he's angry and that shows up in my absence I will know that he wants me dead.
Verse 8.
Therefore deal kindly with your servant, for you have brought your servant into a covenant of the Lord with you. But if there is guilt in me, kill me yourself, for why should you bring me to your father?"
And Jonathan said,
Far be it from you! If I knew that it was determined by my father that harm should come to you, would I not tell you?
Then Jonathan said. Then David said to Jonathan, "Who will tell me if your father answers you roughly?" And Jonathan said to David, "Come, let us go out into the field." So they both went out into the field.
So again this back and forth of how am I going to know? How am I going to know that I'm going to be safe? And Jonathan brings them out into the field and they continue this.
In verse 12 it says,
Jonathan said to David, "The Lord, the God of Israel, be witness when I have sounded out my father about this time tomorrow or the third day. Behold, if he is well disposed towards David, shall I not then send and disclose it to you?"
He said, if I find out, I'm going to let you know.
Verse 13.
But should it please my father to do you harm, the Lord do so to Jonathan. More also, if I do not disclose it to you and send you away, that you may go in safety."
He says, if I catch wind that my father wants you dead, I will let you know so that you can safely escape. May the Lord be with you as he has been with my father.
Which Paul's right there. That is the recognition very clearly from Jonathan that the favor of God has shifted from Saul in his house to David. And what he's going to say next is the recognition and the acceptance that David is the anointed king, the one who Samuel anointed to be the next king.
Verse 14.
"If I am still alive, show me the steadfast love of the Lord, that I may not die. And do not cut off your steadfast love from my house forever, when the Lord cuts off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth."
And that is a part of this friendship covenant. This agreement is the request: when you become king in your steadfast love towards me, do not take this out on my descendants. My children live as you become king. And Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying,
"May the Lord take vengeance on David's enemies."
And Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul.
So they're bound together in this covenant of friendship that will outlive them. And I want us to see the second essential aspect of godly friendship, and that is that godly friendship is steadfast. The godly friendship is steadfast.
Show me the steadfast love of the Lord. Do not cut off your steadfast love from my house forever.
Jonathan asks. Godly friendship is steadfast. You need friends who are steadfast, who are faithful when times are difficult. And you should want to be the type of friend who is steadfast, immovable, faithful to your friend when they are struggling. You should want to embody this type of friendship.
This is what the Proverbs are capturing in Proverbs 18:24, when it says,
A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
Proverbs 17:17 says,
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity,
that you want friends and to be the kind of friend who loves at all times, who's born for the difficult moments of life.
So Matt Freeman, who is one of our pastors, and if you've been coming around, if you're new, been around the last couple of months, you haven't seen Matt. He's been on sabbatical for the last three months. This is actually the final week of sabbatical. Be back next week, which is exciting. Yeah, you can celebrate that, ten of you.
But one of the things I've appreciated about the friendship that Matt and I have is that over, really, the close to the last decade of doing ministry together, I know that Matt is going to be steadfast. I know that he's going to be there when things are difficult, when you do ministry together, like, there are things that are wonderful that you get to celebrate of how God is at work in some powerful ways. And there's also a lot of moments of difficulty. And I've just known for years, like, he's there, that he's in it with me, that he's going to stick closer than a brother, that he's going to be steadfast.
I know that when things get difficult, he's going to be there. He's going to. I know that I'm going to get a message from him asking, how are you doing? How's your soul? How's your walk? With Jesus, how's your family? I know he's going to ask. I know he's going to ask difficult questions because he's there with me, side by side. Even when we get in each other's grill sometimes, because every now and then we'll have an argument, we'll have a dust up, because that's what happens when you work together. And there are times when my wife is like, oh, you guys got an argument, and there's tension in her voice and it's like, it's okay, like, we're fine. We're for each other. We're for each other's good. We're going to disagree at times, but I know that he's going to ride or die. I know that we're going to stick it out together because there's this steadfastness, this loyalty, this faithfulness within him.
And that's the type of faithfulness and steadfastness that Jonathan and David display towards each other. That in the face of death, in the face of some really big political changes that are happening, they are knit together, their love and their friendship is. Is steadfast, it is going to make it and traverse through any of the storms they're about to face.
And that is the type of friendship that we should seek and the type of friends we should seek to be. There's a steadfastness in their friendship.
It continues in verse 18 as they're working out this plan.
Then Jonathan said to him, "Tomorrow is the new moon, and you will be missed because your seat will be empty on the third day. Go down quickly to the place where you hid yourself when the matter was in hand, and remain beside the stone heap. And I will shoot three arrows to the side of it as though I shot at a mark. And behold, I will send the boy, saying, 'Go find the arrows.' If I say to the boy, 'Look, the arrows are on this side of you, take them,' then you are to come, for as the Lord lives, it is safe for you and there is no danger. But if I say to the youth, 'Look, the arrows are beyond you,' then go, for the Lord has sent you away. And as for the matter of which you and I have spoken, behold, the Lord is between you and me forever."
So they devise this plan because it seems like they can't even be seen together at this point that they're going to have. He's going to go out, he's going to shoot arrows, and he says, I shoot him. And they land on this side. And I say to my arrow boy, go to this side and if you get the arrows, you'll know that's the signal. It's safe to come out, it's safe to come back.
Saul doesn't want to kill you. But if I shoot beyond and I tell my arrow boy that the arrows are beyond, you should know that you need to run because my father wants to kill you. So that's the secret sign that they work out together.
All right? Verse 24.
So David hid himself in the field. And when the new moon came, the king sat down to eat food. The king sat on his seat, as at other times on the seat by the wall. Jonathan sat opposite and Abner sat by Saul's side. But David's place was empty.
Verse 26.
Yet Saul did not say anything that day, for he thought something has happened to him. He is not clean, surely he is not clean.
He just thinks, okay, he might be ceremonially unclean. So if you're ceremonially unclean, you can't be in the presence of others. You gotta do some rituals, come back. He'll be back the next day.
Verse 27.
But on the second day, the day after the new moon, David's place was empty. And Saul said to Jonathan, his son, "Why has not the son of Jesse come to the meal either yesterday or today?"
Jonathan answered Saul,
"David earnestly asked leave of me to go to Bethlehem. He said, 'Let me go, for our clan holds a sacrifice in the city, and my brother has commanded me to be there.' So now if I found favor in your eyes, let me get away and see my brothers.' For this reason, he has not come to the king's table."
So I'm going to sugarcoat that straight up lie. Bible's not prescriptive and sometimes like this very descriptive of what's happening here. So he lies. Saul doesn't buy it at all.
Verse 30.
Then Saul's anger was kindled against Jonathan. And he said to him, "You son of a perverse rebellious woman!"
Which that's his wife taking shots everywhere.
"You son of a perverse, rebellious woman, do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and the shame of your mother's nakedness? For as long as the son of Jesse lives on earth, neither you nor your kingdom shall be established."
Which what he does there is he appeals to the base desire of power. Don't you know that David sits on the throne that you're supposed to sit on next? That he's taking the throne from you to your own shame? Jonathan, will you not turn him over? Turn him in so that you can be the future king.
He appeals to this base desire for power.
For as long as the Son of Jesse lives on earth, neither you nor your kingdom shall be established. Therefore send and bring him to me, for he shall surely die."
And Jonathan answered Saul, his father,
"Why should he be put to death? What has he done?"
But Saul hurled his spear at him to strike him.
So Jonathan knew that his father was determined to put David to death.
And Jonathan rose from the table in fierce anger and ate no food the second day of the month. For he was grieved for David because his father had disgraced him.
So Jonathan seeks to again make the case he's done nothing to you. He's only done good to you.
In this country does what Saul does repeatedly, which is pick up. I don't know if he has these spears handy all the time. I mean, he just must rule with a spear. But he also, he's not good at it because he misses again. Happens multiple times in the story. He keeps missing.
And Jonathan is grieved. He's grieved because he knows that his father seeks to kill him. And this is going to change things going forward.
Verse 35.
In the morning, Jonathan went out to the field to the appointment with David and with him, a little boy. They're going to enact a plan, he said to his boy, "Run and find the arrows that I shoot." As the boy ran, he shot an arrow beyond him. And when the boy came to the place of the arrow that Jonathan had shot, Jonathan called after the boy and said, "It's not the arrow beyond you," it's the signal." And Jonathan called after the boy, "Hurry, be quick and do not stay."
So Jonathan's boy gathered up the arrows and came to his master. But the boy knew nothing. Only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
And Jonathan gave his weapons to his boy and said to him,
"Go and carry them in."
Carry them to the city so that signals you need to run. My father wants to kill you.
Verse 41.
As soon as the boy had gone, David rose from beside the stone heap and fell on his face to the ground and bowed three times. And they kissed one another and wept with one another, David weeping the most.
Then Jonathan said to David,
"Go in peace, because we have sworn both of us in the name of the Lord, saying, 'The Lord shall be between me and you and between my offspring and your offspring.'"
For
And they rose and departed, and Jonathan went into the city.
So when the arrow boy is there, their emotions are held together and they begin to be released.
Now you might be thinking, as I thought, why did you go to all this trouble to do this sign if you're just going to pop out and talk? As I had the same thought, I don't fully know my best, my best take is that that was the plan. But they're so overwhelmed by emotion and they're so overwhelmed by their love for one another that this can't be the last time they see each other, that they're willing to risk safety for the sake of embracing one last time as friends.
So he comes out, bows to the ground, showing deference and respect. They kiss, which this is like Italians do today. This is a cultural greeting for them. So this is kissing on both sides of the cheek. New Testament says, greet each other with a holy kiss.
You've been here long enough, you know, we don't do that. We're not going to start. But this is dapping each other up. This is bro huggin. This is the culturally appropriate way to greet one, to greet a friend like this. So they greet, they embrace, and they weep.
This is David. So David wept the most, weeping bitterly. And I think the reason, A, why they're willing to risk coming out in the open and B, why this is such a grievous moment, such a sad filled moment is because they know everything's going to change. Their friendship and the way that it has gone is not going to continue. David's going to be on the run for the rest of his days. They won't be together anymore and their hearts are broken because of the love they have for one another as friends and what they're having to give up to continue.
And that brings me to the third essential aspect of godly friendship. And that godly friendship is sacrificial. The godly friendship is sacrificial.
It's hard to tell when Jonathan knew fully that David was the one that Samuel had anointed to be the future king of Israel. Some are going to argue and say that in the beginning of chapter 18, when he gives up his cloak, he gives up his, his robe and his armor that's symbolic of the passing of the torch and that Jonathan in that moment was conveying that. I think that's a little speculative, but I wouldn't lean and say that's put a ton of force on that. It certainly shows a great amount of deference and respect.
But boy, oh boy, when you get through chapter 19, if you're not convinced by the end of chapter 19, it's so clear here in chapter 20 that Jonathan knows that God has chosen David to be king and not him. He knows it.
Which means that every single step that Jonathan takes in helping David is solidifying David on the throne and not him. That every time, that he continues to help David, every time he helps save and preserve his life, that he is counting the future of David as more significant than his own. That he's sacrificing his place on the throne.
He's not fighting the will of God. He's trusting in God's will and his choice. And also loving his friend sacrificially. It's a beautiful picture. What friendship is supposed to be in sacrificial friendship.
One of the themes that shows up in the Lord of the Rings and the series is friendship. One of the main themes of that story. And particularly if you focus on the friendship between Samwise and Frodo, the two hobbits, that is one filled with sacrificial friendship.
In the first movie, when Frodo has decided that he's going to go on his own, he's going to take the Ring himself, that he gets on the boat and Sam, who cannot swim, follows him out into the water and begins to drown himself because he's so committed for the betterment of Frodo to help his friend that he's willing to sacrifice his own life to make the point.
The books quote and say, "I'll knock holes in all the boats." That's this thing. You're not going without me. I'm giving up my life, my safety, for the sake of helping you and the burden that you are carrying. I'll sink every boat and we'll sink together. But you're not going out alone.
And when you follow that story throughout all three of the movies or books, you see this over and over and over again, all the way to the very end where they're almost there to deliver the Ring and they're starving and they only got a little food left. And Sam gives Frodo the majority of the food, sacrificing for the sake of his friend who's so deeply burdened. It's a beautiful picture of sacrificial friendship.
Are you willing to be the type of friend that says, I will sink this boat? You're not going anywhere until we talk this through, until you tell me what's going on, until you let me help you. Are you willing to be the type of friend who's willing to go without that your friend is struggling and they're in their season of adversity. And when you talk, they're mostly sharing about their problems. But you're willing to sacrifice sharing your life for the sake of helping them bear this burden. Because you love them and because you count them more significant than yourself. Are you willing to be a sacrificial friend on behalf of your friends?
That's what Jonathan was to David. It's a beautiful picture of sacrificial friendship. To love your friend at cost to yourself. Your friendship was filled with selfless, steadfast and sacrificial friendship.
Now as you walk through this, you may be receiving this and may be thinking and evaluating. Man, I wish I had friends like that. You may be thinking about the friends in your life. I wish that person was more selfless. That person, they're not steadfast, they're not faithful like they should be. They're not sacrificing.
And what I want to push on is I think you've missed a step. Because if you're immediate response to this story is to begin to evaluate all the ways that your friends have failed you, you haven't looked in the mirror first.
Jesus says,
"Take the plank out of your own eye, so that you can see the speck in your brother's eye."
You should do the soul work of examining your own heart and asking difficult questions.
Have I been selfless? Like, really considering others more significant than myself? Are you steadfast? Are you there when things are difficult? Are you looking for an exit as soon as things get difficult, as soon as the fun stops? Do you sacrifice? Do you give up time? Do you give up energy? Are you willing to give away for the sake of your friend and your friends?
And maybe you do that soul work and you say, yeah, I need to repent here. I need to change here. I need to have a conversation there. And then you come to the conclusion, but, yeah, but there's still this longing within me. Like, I've tried to be a friend for years and this type of deep friendship has eluded me for years. And this becomes really a story of pain for you.
What I'd like to suggest is two things.
The first, don't give up. I think the Church of Jesus Christ is a beautiful place to find friends, to find deep friendships that embody the friendship of David and Jonathan.
So first is, don't give up. Press in.
The second is that it's very possible that you have placed your hope in the friendship of men and women. And what I want to very clearly say is that your ultimate hope should be in friendship with God. That this deep longing and desire will only be fully satiated and satisfied in friendship with God.
Because while Jonathan and David are a wonderful example of friendship, and they are, and we should learn from them, they are not the purest form of friendship that is found in this life.
You see, Jonathan and David start as two men who love each other. But the friendship that God offers doesn't start that way. The friendship that Jesus offers us is to people who are hostile to him, to people who oppose his very ways.
You see, when you read the Gospels and you get to a passage like Luke 7, when chapter 7, verse 34, when the Pharisees, the religious leaders are taking a shot at Jesus and they say,
"The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, 'Look at him, a glutton, a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.'"
That when we read that, we most often think about the self righteousness of the religious leaders because Jesus is willing to be friends with the lowliest, the sinners.
But what gets lost in them is that Jesus befriends crowds of people whose very lives and the choices that they make every day oppose the way that Jesus has set out for creation, that they, with every deliberate choice to sin against God, they have chosen to sin against Jesus.
And what this ultimately is, is foreshadowing of what Jesus offers us in the Gospel that we, as the passage we read earlier, were alienated and hostile in mind. What Mike was preaching about last week, that as Jesus displays kindness to us, we don't start that way. We are enemies of God.
So this isn't two people who love each other initially. This is Jesus who loves hostile sinners. And the love and the friendship that he offers us breaks through to our hearts in a way that captures us.
And another foreshadowing that Jesus does in his ministry. In John 15, Jesus says,
"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."
Which is a foreshadowing of what's about to happen in an act so selfless, so steadfast in love, so sacrificial, that Jesus lays down his life at the cross for enemies to make them friends.
That is the purest form of friendship that you can discover in this life. It is friendship with God and fellowship with him that you get a picture of now that resounds more beautifully, more wonderfully into eternity.
That is where our hope should be.
So yes, as we learn this and as we talk about this in groups this week, we absolutely should learn from David and Jonathan and we should see the selflessness and the steadfastness and the sacrificial nature of their friendship. And we should walk away from this, evaluating ourselves, the friends that we can be.
But for those of us that are longing for fellowship, those of us that are longing for friendship, we must first take the step of finding that in Christ and the most perfect and most pure friendship that is offered in him.
The band's going to come up and we get to do that and consider that for a moment, that we should consider Christ and what he offers.
And it is possible that for some of you, the loneliness that you feel in this life is not just because you don't have good friends. It's because you actually don't have Christ.
And my hope for you this morning is that you would find your hope for fulfillment and friendship in Christ and Him alone.
And for those of us who have trusted in Jesus, some of us need to walk away and we need to. We might need to have some conversations with some people this week, might need to confess some sin and confess some ways that we have failed, might need to consider the ways in which we need to grow in this so that we can be the type of godly friend that desires that God desires his people be.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us see the friendship that is offered in you, the friendship that is offered in our Savior, in Christ, the friend that we have in him. God, I pray that that would compel our hearts towards faith and surrendering to have fellowship with you from here into eternity. God, I pray that we would not leave this word without reflecting on our own hearts and the ways that we have failed to be the friends that God has called us to be and that we would change. And that the fruit that comes out of the effort this week results in reconciliation. It results in love, results in service, results in godliness and friendship. We ask this in Jesus name, Amen.
1 Samuel 11
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in First Samuel chapter 10, and we're picking up where we left off last week. Last week, we read about Saul being anointed as king. He went looking for some lost donkeys, and eventually, he went to a place where there was a prophet. It turned out that prophet was Samuel. Samuel sees Saul, and God tells Samuel, "That's him. That's the guy I told you was going to be king. I told you you'd see him today." And there he is. He anoints him as king. Saul goes to a dinner where he sits at the head of the table. Then he goes home and tells no one that he has been anointed king.
We're going to pick up today where we left off. Spencer told us a little bit about where this ends up with Saul, and that it doesn't go well for him. But we're not there yet in the story, and today we're going to look at how his story begins. It starts off okay. So, we're going to look at verse 17 of 1 Samuel chapter 10. It says this: Now Samuel called the people together to the Lord at Mispa. He said to the people of Israel, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, I've brought up Israel out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you. But today you have rejected your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses, and you have said to him, 'Set a king over us.' Now therefore, present yourselves before the Lord by your tribes and by your thousands."
They said they want a king. They're bringing together to give them a king. Normally, in these sorts of things, the first person who gets up and talks pumps some ceremony and highlights the importance of the day. Samuel gets up and says, "You used to follow God who saves you from everything. You've rejected him, and today you won't have God. You'll have some guy." Now, line up. It's not the best start, but they're going to line up. They're going to choose a king by lot.
By lot just means a system for randomly choosing. We do some things by lot culturally; we don't call it that, but we draw straws, flip a coin, pull a name from a hat, hold a lottery, or a raffle. Paper rock scissors is just competitive lots where you feel like you won something, even though it was still pretty random.
A lot of things were done by lot historically and culturally all over the place. It just means they have a random system for choosing. They would use urim and thummim. They had the breastplate of the high priest that they would use for this at times. They also may have used some other different methods. People trusted that God would give them the answer through this.
This is not uncommon to them. We see a whole section of this playing out in Joshua chapter 7, where they are trying to find out who sinned against God, and they walk it all the way down to the household of Achan. So they're going to choose by lot. Samuel, verse 20, brings all the tribes of Israel near, and the tribe of Benjamin was taken by lot.
Now, God already told Samuel who was going to be king. Samuel already told Saul he was going to be king. They're going to do this now by lot. Samuel is going to see, and Saul's going to see, that God is overseeing the lot. But for everybody else, they're just going to see that this is how God works in choosing, and they may not have known or wouldn't have known already that Saul is the one to be chosen. But Benjamin is the tribe he comes from, that Saul is from.
It says the tribe of Benjamin was taken by lot. He brought the tribe of Benjamin near by its clans, and the clan of the Matrites was taken by lot. Saul, the son of Kish, was taken by lot. But when they sought him, he could not be found.
So, however they were taking lots and doing this, there was some sort of representative tokens or something used to pick a person because they selected a person who's not there. So the lot falls on Saul, the son of Kish, and he's not there.
They looked for him. So they're doing this, and they're like tribe of Benjamin. They move up, and then they do the next process, and they say the clan of the Matrites. Then everybody moves off, and the Matrites come near somehow and then they say Saul, the son of Kish. So is Saul here? Where's Saul? Like, they have to go look for him, and the whole country's here, and now we're looking for Saul. The whole process has stopped to the point that it says, "But when they sought him, he could not be found."
Verse 22: So they inquired again of the Lord, "Is there a man still to come?" It slows down so much that they're like, "Let's ask God again." They inquire of the Lord, "Are we waiting for somebody else? Did we do what is happening?" And God says, "Behold, he has hidden himself among the baggage."
We know that Saul showed up, but we don't know at what point he hid. Maybe it was right when they said line up. Maybe it was when Benjamin got picked and he thought, "Oh no." Maybe he waited till it was the Matrites, then he was like, "Oh no." But he definitely wasn't there when they said Saul, the son of Kish. The baggage is the luggage that everybody has shown up with; they just piled all their gear up, all their supplies in a certain spot. And Saul goes and hides, which is a real cute look for your new king.
So God tells them, "No, I picked the right person. He's hiding." Then it says, "Then they ran and took him from there." I would assume, just trying to picture this, they're excited. They run. I also think that means there's a lot of children involved. They say he's in the supplies, and everybody just takes off. This whole group takes off and finds Saul hiding.
I don't know how he hid. The text doesn't tell us. It's possible there was no one near the supplies and he just went there. It's possible he hid. You remember playing hide-and-seek? The better your hiding spot, the more awkward it is to get out of it once you've been caught. We're told that Saul's a big dude. I don't know if he was just tucked behind stuff, and they were like, "God told us you were here," and he came out. Or if he was in stuff, and they had to be like, "Hey man, get up," and he had to crawl out of things. But it's not a good look.
They bring him out. Samuel said to all the people, oh sorry, they ran and took him, and when he stood among the people, he was taller than any of the people from his shoulders upward. They bring him out, and he's a head taller than everybody. Samuel said to all the people, "Do you see him whom the Lord has chosen? There is none like him among all the people."
There are a couple of ways to understand what he's saying there. He possibly is just saying now that he is king, he stands above everybody else. Here's your king, and no one’s like him. It's a from now on kind of thing. It's also possible that all he's saying here is look at him, remember what he looks like, and he looks different than everybody. So later, when you see a guy who's taller than everybody, you can say, "Oh yeah, I remember that. That's our king." It's possible he's just commenting on what he looks like. It's also possible that what he means is now he stands above everybody, not literally but figuratively.
All the people shouted, "Long live the king." They've chosen the king. They know who it is, and they all shout, "Long live the king."
Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship, wrote them in a book, and laid it before the Lord. We don't know what he wrote. My guess is it included some of the stuff we've read in Deuteronomy about what a king is supposed to be like. It probably included some things Samuel said—that if you get a king, he's going to do all this stuff—but he gives some restrictions, this is what a king is allowed to do, and duties, here's what he's supposed to do, has to do. He declares it all to everybody, like, "Alright, y'all got a king now and here's what a king can and can't do and should do." He writes it all down and puts it before the Lord.
Samuel sent all the people away, each to his home. We're going to get more information about how this plays out. I appreciate the detail. They get everybody together; they choose a king. Then they go play hide-and-seek with the king, find him, then Samuel says, "Look at him." He announces, and then he just goes, "Alright, go home."
We're told Saul goes home because they've never had a king before. He doesn't have a palace. He's no castle. They just say, "Here's what kings are allowed to do. You got one. Yay. Go home."
It says, "Saul also went to his home at Gibeah." He just was like, "Okay, I'm king now. I'm going home." With him went men of valor whose hearts God had touched.
God begins to work and sends brave, capable, valiant men with Saul. But some worthless fellows said, "How can this man save us?" They despised him and brought him no present. Other people were apparently prepared to give something to honor the king. But they're like, "We're not doing it. He'll get no present from us. We don't like him."
They despised him, brought him no present, but he held his peace. We're told God touches the hearts of valiant men, and these worthless men reject Saul. But I can't help but feel like the worthless men have a point. They're in a time of war. Part of the reason they've picked a king is they want someone to save them. That's part of the reason Samuel's upset with them: God saves them.
But they are constantly at war with the people around them. They want someone to go out and fight their battles. They say, "How can this guy save us?" Saul's start isn't a good one.
What do we know about Saul at this point? We've read chapters 9 and 10 and were introduced to him in chapter 9. We know his dad is wealthy. If you wanted to talk about that nicely, you'd say he's from a well-off family. If you didn't like Saul, you'd say, "Yeah, daddy's rich." You could spin that one way or the other.
We know his family is wealthy. We know Saul is tall and handsome, so if you wanted to date him, these are the categories you'd pick. I told you a couple of weeks ago that they're not the best ones, but tall, handsome, rich—that doesn't make you king.
So far, we've seen him unsuccessfully find donkeys, and then hide when they called his name. That's what we know of Saul. He was humble, but he seems humble to the point of not wanting to do this.
I don't know if we would like him. Some people would like that he was tall, might like that he was wealthy, and you might appreciate that he's handsome. But I don't know if we'd pick him as king.
In our country, Kennedy and Nixon have a debate, and Nixon was sweaty and people were like, "Seems real sweaty. Can't elect that guy." He lost. I can tell you it's a big deal because I know about it.
The first election I was able to vote in was Obama, way after Kennedy and Nixon. If Nixon had been hiding in the back under a table, not well, hyperventilating, and they had to start off by saying, "Candidate Nixon is hiding in the back under a table, breathing in a bag, refuses to come out, says that he'd like to speak to his mother," they would have had a tough time. They would ask Senator Kennedy what he thought about that. But Nixon was just sweaty. He glistened too much on TV, and people said, "Can't trust him." People were kind of right.
So there you go. This guy hid. They had to go find him. What makes him special? Why is God blessing and sending valiant men with him? And why are these people called worthless? He didn't win a battle. He didn't accomplish anything. He didn't win a tournament. He wasn't the most anything, really—most tall. I want to show you all what it says.
Verse 24: Samuel said to all the people, "Do you see him whom the Lord has chosen?" Now we know why he's special—the Lord chose him. Therefore, it's worthless to reject him whom the Lord has chosen, and it's a good thing to do to follow him whom the Lord has chosen because he's chosen.
That's what makes him special—God, in his divine choosing, chose him.
But everybody goes home. Saul keeps his peace. We're going to chapter 11.
Then Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh Gilead. We've been hearing about problems with the Philistines on the west. Israel is in the middle. Jabesh Gilead is over here on the east, and the Ammonites are over here. The Ammonites have now besieged Jabesh Gilead on the other side of the Jordan.
Isn't it nice to live where and when we do, where this doesn't happen as often? Historically, this was super common: an army shows up, you're hanging out, suddenly you see people marching, your walled city is surrounded, and they just besiege it. If you have a big enough army, you're ready to go get some stuff.
All the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, "Make a treaty with us and we will serve you." That phrasing is actually "cut a treaty with us," which is how they would cut a covenant. They would cut up an animal, mingle the blood, then walk through. It's officially called a suzerain and vassal covenant, where you have one ruling authority over a vassal state that will pay tribute, taxes.
So they say, "That's a nice besieging army you have there." They send out an envoy and say, "We'll cut a covenant with you and start sending you money. Deal." Nahash says, "Deal." But Nahash the Ammonite said, "On this condition: I will make a treaty with you that I gouge out all your right eyes and thus bring disgrace on all Israel."
They’re not going to cut up an animal; they’re going to cut up you. Line up. I'll pop out all your right eyes and bring shame on all Israel. That'll be the covenant, then you'll owe me taxes.
The elders of Jabesh said, "Give us seven days' respite that we may send messengers through all the territory of Israel. Then if there is no one to save us, we will give ourselves up to you."
That's desperation. What else can they do? They said, "Let us go through all Israel and ask." He says yes, which seems crazy culturally—that he would say yes.
They basically say, "Give us a chance to see if someone wants to come kill you. If they do, thanks for waiting. If they don't, you can gouge our eyes out." It makes some sense because his goal was to bring shame on all Israel.
They said, "Let us go through all Israel and ask." He apparently says yes because next we hear: when the messengers came to Gibeah of Saul, they reported the matter to the people, and all the people wept aloud.
They heard the news; they were heartbroken. This is awful. They seem despondent. What are we going to do?
The people of Israel have been a loose collection of peoples, tribes, and have never really banded together for some things. That's part of the reason Nahash thinks, "Sure, try to get those people together."
Now Saul was coming from the field behind the oxen. He's gone back to work. Saul said, "What is wrong that the people are weeping?" They told him the news about Jabesh.
The spirit of God rushed upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled. He took a yoke of oxen, cut them in pieces, and sent them throughout all Israel by messengers, saying, "Whoever does not come out after Saul and Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen."
Then the dread of the Lord fell upon the people, and they came out as one man.
Imagine someone rides into your town with two-day-old ox pieces, tosses it down, and says, "Hey." Everybody's like, "What are you doing?" He says, "Saul, our king, cut that ox up." He says, "Get your weapons and muster or he's going to cut your oxen."
It's an effective message. The dread of the Lord fell on the people, and they come as one man.
Verse 8: When Saul mustered them at Bezek, the people of Israel were 300,000, and the men of Judah 30,000. They told the messengers, "Say this to Jabesh Gilead: Tomorrow, by the time the sun is hot, you shall have salvation."
Their city's besieged. To get that message in, these people must cross back through. Nahash knows they're going back in; people are returning now with the answer. When the messengers told Jabesh, they were glad.
Verse 10: They said to Nahash, "Tomorrow we will give ourselves up to you and you may do to us whatever seems good to you."
That phrase is fair translation, or, "We'll come out to you. We'll march out." They intentionally tightrope walk—"We'll come on out; you can do whatever you want to."
There's a little eye play on words, too: "We'll let your eyes do what you want to do," which is what they said.
Verse 11: The next day Saul put the people in three companies; they came into the midst of the camp in the morning watch, before sunrise, and struck down the Ammonites until the heat of the day. Those who survived were scattered so no two of them were left together.
Nahash surrounded a city, very confident, then 330,000 Israelites showed up in the middle of the night, and it went very poorly for Nahash.
Verse 12: The people said to Samuel, "Who said Saul shouldn't reign over us? Bring those men so we may put them to death." Those who stood against Saul did it publicly. After Saul showed he can lead, muster, bring rescue, they said, "Who said Saul wasn't going to be in charge? Let's kill them, too."
Those guys are there because they all showed up, and they were like, "No, this turned real quick."
Saul said, "Not a man shall be put to death today, for today the Lord has worked salvation in Israel."
Samuel said to the people, "Come, let us go to Gilgal and renew the kingdom." All the people went to Gilgal; there they made Saul king before the Lord. They sacrificed peace offerings before the Lord, and Saul and the men of Israel rejoiced greatly.
So we've seen Saul anointed, chosen, and now solidify as king.
We've seen bits and pieces of his character. One thing to keep asking: what makes him special? Why is he special? What's worked here to make this good?
Reading the text, God chose him and empowered him. The Spirit of the Lord fell on him, kindled his anger, then Saul acted. The last time we saw him do something good was prophesying when the Spirit fell on him.
He's been chosen and empowered by the Spirit. God hasn't just picked out the best guy—he's picked someone and is empowering them.
I want to take a moment as a church family, as Christians, those following Jesus, to wrap our heads around what Saul has. We have something even better.
What happened for Saul? Something even better has happened for us. So, turn with me to Ephesians 1.
Paul writes to Christians about what it means to belong to the Lord. In verse 3, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places."
That's wonderful. We are blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing.
"He chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him."
What makes us special? He chose us. What made Saul special? He was chosen.
In the New Testament, he chooses those whom he blesses. We're blessed because he chose us.
"He chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him." If you belong to Jesus, you are holy and blameless because of Jesus, not you. You're blessed because of his choosing, not you.
He did this before the foundation of the world. If you're a Christian and wonder why you're special, why did I get to believe this, why me? Because he chose. He did this.
When we look at Saul and say, "Why did he choose Saul?" It doesn't tell us why. It tells us some things, but not the reason.
Why did he choose me? It says, "In love." It's not in us; it's in his love.
We were loved in him, so we love him because he first loved us.
"He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will."
He loves us and brings us to himself, which is wonderful. If you belong to Jesus, you don't get in on a technicality like, "Try not to cause problems; you got in because you trusted in Jesus." No.
"In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons." He wants you and me, the church, to belong to him, to be enjoyed, to be delighted in.
Why does he love me? "According to the purpose of his will."
Then it says to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he blessed us in the beloved. Grace is unearned favor—unearned, unmerited, undeserved.
What gets praised? Not anything you've done or accomplished; it's grace, glorious grace.
You say, "I don't feel good enough." It's not about that. He saved you by glorious grace, and he's wonderful.
According to the purpose of his will.
This is beautiful—that it's by his divine choosing.
Imagine being gathered with the people of Israel and the lot falling to you and saying, "What?"
But what we've been chosen for is so much more glorious, wonderful, eternal. It's staggering what he, in his divine purpose and glorious grace, has chosen in the blood.
It keeps going. Ephesians 1:7, "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time—to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth."
Highlight this: in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.
If you're keeping score at home, trespasses are what you brought.
"According to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom," making known the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ, not in you.
He purposed and accomplished it in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him—heaven and earth.
This is about Jesus and God's glorious will.
If you belong to him, it's because he has made you belong to him.
You've been chosen because he's chosen.
You brought sin that made the sacrifice necessary, but you didn't earn, achieve, or keep it. It's not about you.
If they had gathered the people and said, "Hold on. Let's see if he's good at this. Let's watch him a while."
They would all be wrong because God already chose.
If you've trusted Jesus, it's in response to his divine choosing.
You are kept, held, worked on because of him and what he has done.
He has qualified you.
It's about him, not you.
And if you've met yourself, that's great news.
I've had times when I go into a tough conversation prepared, using pep talks, and still fall apart.
It's not about your ability to hold it together or keep it.
It's not about your ability to earn it.
It's about him.
Ok, hold on, sorry.
Verse 11 repeats, but in him we have attained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.
If chosen, it's because he did this.
So we who first hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
So he's glorified, praised, exalted.
It's not about you.
You're involved as the object, the recipient.
When you consider your walk with Jesus, you're not the subject or the verb.
God is doing the work, Christ is doing the work.
You're down here being acted on by a glorious God who divinely chooses, rescues, saves, redeems, and keeps according to the purpose of his will, because of his love, because of his glorious grace, and to the praise of his glory.
You shouldn’t think, "I must be one of the good ones."
God didn't pick you because of something special.
You wouldn't conclude you earned or achieved this.
You’d conclude you need to praise his glory.
Why are you a Christian? Because Jesus is wonderful, good; he redeems, saves, and loves.
That would all turn back to praising his glory and grace.
But you say, "Saul falls apart. God chooses, Saul loses it."
Good point.
That's why I said we have something better than Saul.
Saul was chosen for a role in an earthly kingdom.
He was chosen temporarily as a king in a temporary kingdom.
He was empowered by the Spirit for some of what God was going to do, but he ultimately lost it.
We in Christ are not chosen by lot.
We’re chosen by grace.
Not chosen by Samuel through lots, but chosen by Jesus through his blood.
Chosen for an eternal kingdom.
Verse 13: "In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation"—that is, Jesus Christ came, died on the cross, rose again so you might have hope and faith.
That's proclaimed in baptism: Jesus was dead and buried, and with him we die and bury our sin.
Without Jesus, we don't rise, but because Jesus rose, we rise.
We are washed clean, made new, given new life; our sin is dead and buried with Christ, and we rise with him with justification—we're made new and whole.
That's what we celebrate.
The gospel says when you heard it and believed it, believed in him, you said, "It's not about me; it's about him. I don't believe in me; I believe in him."
That's your process, your response.
You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.
Sealed.
Saul was empowered; we are too.
The New Testament tells us he's empowered us for mission.
But we're not just empowered; we're sealed.
The promised Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.
The Spirit will keep you going until you get the full inheritance of all the blessings of Christ.
It's guaranteed; a guarantee is as good as the person who makes it.
And it's the God of the universe.
You're not just empowered; you're sealed, kept, and guaranteed.
Jesus says you're put in his Father's hand, and no one takes anything from the Father's hand.
If that's true for me and my sons, 10 and 7, it's true for God.
If He’s holding something, He’s not letting go.
It's guaranteed.
Sealed by the Spirit, and it’s working.
He says in chapter 4, "Don't grieve the Spirit by whom you were sealed for the Day of Redemption."
You say, "But I'm doing bad stuff, grieving the Spirit, causing problems."
He says, "Yes, don't do that, but you're sealed for the day of redemption."
That's the Spirit you’re grieving—who will be with you the entire time until he brings you to the conclusion of the inheritance, till he gets you where he plans to take you by his purpose.
He ends, "To the praise of his glory."
Oh, that he might be praised, exalted, lifted up.
Do you realize you've been chosen in a lottery far better than being the king of Israel?
If you belong to Jesus, you’ve been chosen by his divine choosing and good pleasure, according to the purpose of his will.
He lavished grace upon you, made you his forever, sealed you with the Spirit, and will bring you to the end.
May we praise him, honor him, follow him, and not grieve the Spirit.
At all points, may we know it is by his glorious grace, accomplished in him, brought about by him, and about him.
At no point say, "But I haven’t done this," or "I haven’t done that."
Have you trusted in him? Then stop talking about you.
Do you believe in him? Or do you believe in yourself?
We say, "No, I believe in him."
Therefore, we are made free; we are brought to the end.
Praise his name.
Let's pray
1 Samuel 9-10
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. So, we are back in 1 Samuel after taking a break for Holy Week. And I'll be honest with you, it's a lot of text today. So, if you want to grab a Bible, you can follow along with us. The text will also be on the screen, but we got all of chapter nine and half of chapter 10 that we're going to work through.
So, we're picking back up where we left off in chapter 8 when the people of God demanded to have a king. They wanted a king like the nations. And Samuel, who is the judge and the prophet at the time, listens and then listens to the Lord, and the Lord says give them what they want. So that's how chapter 8 ends.
We begin chapter 9 with really the question: who is this king going to be? Who's the first human king of Israel? We're picking up in verse one: "There is a man of Benjamin."
Let me pause there. Benjamin is a tribe. It's one of the 12 tribes of Israel in the promised land. Benjamin was one of the sons of Jacob of Israel, and it's the smallest of the tribes. Think of it like counties in a state. Benjamin is a smaller region with a small population. When they come into the promised land in the book of Numbers — and right now, as a church, we're going through a reading plan that has Old and New Testament readings — so when you read Numbers, you see that Benjamin has smaller numbers, but that gets worse in the book of Judges when they wage war with the other 11 tribes. You can read that story, and what they are defending is indefensible evil. They almost get wiped out because of it.
This is the tribe of Benjamin. When Benjamin was receiving the blessing for his heritage back in Genesis 49, he is called a ravenous wolf. That's language for they're a bit war hungry, scrappy, and small. They have a checkered past — a really checkered past when you read the book of Judges.
So, there was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish, son of Abel, son of Zeror, son of Beckarath, son of Aphia, a Benjaminite, a man of wealth. He had a son whose name was Saul, a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he. From his shoulders upward, he was taller than any of the people.
If you're familiar with the Old Testament, you may have heard of Saul. Saul is, as we will see in chapters 9 and 10, the first king of Israel. So, we take note that he's a Benjaminite, interestingly, from a wealthy family — the family of Kish. But most importantly, he stands out because he's handsome, tall — taller than anyone else.
He's kind of like Gaston from Beauty and the Beast of Benjamin. No one as slick or fast or strong as Gaston. This is Saul, and he looks the part.
What follows starting in verse three is the story of how he is chosen. Now, the donkeys of Kish, Saul's father, were lost. Kish said to Saul, "Take one of the young men with you and arise and go and look for the donkeys."
They passed through the hill country of Ephraim and the land of Shallashim but did not find them; they passed through the land of Shaleim but were not there; and they passed through the land of Benjamin but did not find them. So, the donkeys were missing, and this family livelihood was at stake.
Saul and his servant came to the land of Zuf, and Saul said to his servant, "Come, let us go back, lest my father cease to care about the donkeys and become anxious about us." He recognizes that their lives may be more important than donkeys.
But his servant had an idea and said, "Behold, there is a man of God in the city, held in honor; all that he says comes true. Let us go there, perhaps he can tell us the way we should go."
Saul replied, "But if we go, what can we bring the man? For our bread and sacks are gone, and there is no present to bring to the man of God. What do we have?"
The servant answered, "Here have with me a quarter of a shekel of silver, and I will give it to the man of God to tell us our way."
In Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he said, "Come, let us go to the seer," for what today we call a prophet used to be called a seer.
Saul said to his servant, "Well said, come, let us go." So they went to the city where the man of God was.
On the way up to the city, they met young women coming to draw water and asked them, "Is the seer here?" They answered, "He is. Behold, he is just ahead of you."
The women told them to hurry because the seer had just come to the city for a sacrifice on the high place. Before he eats, he must bless the sacrifice, then those invited will eat. They should go on and meet him immediately.
They went up to the city and saw Samuel coming out toward them on his way up to the high place — not just any seer, not just any prophet, but Samuel. The book is named after him, so this is a big moment.
Before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel, "Tomorrow about this time, I will send to you a man from Benjamin. You shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines, for I have seen their cry and heard it."
This is not a random coincidence; God is at work, orchestrating ordinary events for extraordinary purposes. So Samuel waits and watches for this man.
When Samuel saw Saul, the Lord told him, "Here is the man of whom I spoke. He shall restrain my people."
Samuel saw Saul arrive, tall and handsome, and God confirmed it was he who would lead the people.
Then Saul approached Samuel at the gate and asked, "Tell me, where is the house of the seer?" Samuel said, "I am the seer."
Samuel invited Saul to eat with him that day, promising to tell him all he had on his mind in the morning. Samuel also reassured Saul about his donkeys—that they had been found, so Saul should not worry.
Samuel then asked, "For whom is all that is desirable in Israel? Is it not for you and your father's house?"
Saul was taken aback by this and said, "Am I not a Benjaminite, from the least of the tribes? And is my clan not the humblest of the clans in Benjamin? Why then have you spoken to me like this?"
Samuel did not answer this question but brought Saul in and gave him a place of honor among about 30 guests.
Samuel instructed the cook to bring the portion he had set aside, the choice leg of the animal, and presented it to Saul. This confirmed Saul's special status.
That night, Saul lay down on the roof to sleep, likely overwhelmed by all that had happened.
At dawn, Samuel called Saul to get up so that he might send him on his way.
As they left the city, Samuel told Saul to tell his servant to pass on ahead and then to stop so Samuel could make known to him the word of God.
Samuel took a flask of oil, poured it on Saul's head, and kissed him saying, "The Lord has anointed you to be prince over his people Israel. You shall reign over the people of the Lord and save them from their surrounding enemies."
There was no doubt now that Saul was chosen and anointed as king. Samuel then gave Saul very specific instructions about events to confirm his kingship.
When Saul left Samuel, he would meet two men by Rachel's tomb in Benjamin who would tell him the donkeys were found and that his father was anxious about him.
From there, Saul would meet three men going to God at Bethel carrying goats, bread, and wine. They would greet him and give him two loaves of bread.
Then, at Gibeah, near a Philistine garrison, Saul would meet a group of prophets coming down from the high place, prophesying and playing instruments.
The Spirit of the Lord would rush upon Saul, and he would prophesy with them and be changed into another man.
Samuel instructed Saul to do whatever his hand found to do because God would be with him.
Samuel told Saul to go down before him to Gilgal and wait seven days for Samuel’s arrival to offer sacrifices and give further instructions.
When Samuel turned to leave, God gave Saul another heart. God was actively changing him to be the leader Israel needed.
All the signs came to pass that day. When Saul came to Gibeah, a group of prophets met him; the Spirit of God came upon him; he prophesied.
Those who had known him previously were astounded and asked, "What has come over the son of Kish? Is Saul among the prophets?" It became a proverb.
When Saul returned home, his uncle asked where he had been, and Saul said he was seeking the donkeys but went to Samuel when they were not found.
Saul’s uncle asked what Samuel said, and Saul told him the donkeys had been found but kept silent about the matter of the kingdom.
And that is where we stop today, picking up next week with Saul's coronation as the first king of Israel and his initial acts as king.
If you read this story for the first time, there is a lot of optimism: God chooses Benjamin, a tribe with a dark past, and Saul looks the part—tall, handsome, a warrior from the wolf tribe.
But when you read the context, it is not an optimistic story. The people of Israel at the end of chapter 8 refused to obey Samuel and demanded a king to be like the nations, rejecting God as their king and leader.
They didn't want God to fight their battles but to have a human king who would. Saul fits this desire perfectly. He looks like the mighty pagan kings surrounding them.
Yet, the story of Saul is a tragedy. He makes many mistakes; his flaws overtake him, leading to a tragic end. He becomes a footnote in the story of David, a cautionary tale of cowardice and vanity.
Though he looks the part, he does not have the heart to be king. Soon, God will reject him and choose David, a man after His own heart.
David, it turns out, was not impressive by worldly standards — not tall or handsome. In fact, when Jesus comes, Isaiah 53 prophesies he will have no form or majesty, no beauty to desire him.
Jesus does not look like the king people want.
Even now, many want a king who will give them prosperity, power, ease, or control, rather than the King who calls us into relationship and obedience.
We want a king who meets our desires on our schedule rather than giving us what we need in His timing.
Some even want no king at all, preferring to be their own kings.
This folly of wanting a king after our own heart instead of God's remains today.
The good news is that God will bring a king after His own heart through David and ultimately through Jesus, the true King who establishes an eternal kingdom.
As we witness the rise and fall of Saul, let's not be arrogant but reflective, seeing ourselves in this story.
Let's recognize how we also want a king we create rather than the King who has already chosen us.
Tomorrow, we'll take the Lord's Supper, remembering the King who gave His body and blood for us.
Christians come humbly to proclaim our need for King Jesus.
If you are not a Christian, come with humility to this King and place your trust in Him.
The table is open for those who know they need Him.
Let me pray.
Heavenly Father, I pray the gospel of the kingdom comes upon our hearts so we see all the ways we reject You as King.
Help us come humbly and joyfully to Your table, worshiping and delighting in You, trusting Your ways, not our own.
If anyone here is not fully trusting in You as King, may You compel their hearts to see You as better.
We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
1 Samuel 8
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in the book of 1 Samuel, chapter 8. We are working our way through the book of 1 Samuel. So if you'll grab a Bible and go to chapter 8, that's where we'll be today.
Much of the book of 1 Samuel deals with the kingship in Israel. They have not had a king. The book is about the questions of will we have a king, how will we have a king, and who will be the king. A large portion of Samuel deals with that. We get into that today as this is where the process of inaugurating kingship in Israel begins.
We're going to read through all of chapter 8, and hopefully, as we see this, we'll learn a little bit about what's going on, a little bit about the hearts of the people, and be able to evaluate ourselves as well. So this is chapter 8, verse 1: "When Samuel became old"—so they had had a big victory and peace with the Philistines and the Amorites—"and Samuel had been judging over Israel, governing and leading, it says when Samuel became old he made his sons judges over Israel." The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah. They were judges in Beersheba.
Yet his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice. So his sons were not governing correctly. This is wickedness. It's wickedness anywhere. It's wickedness in Israel, where explicitly it's taught you're not allowed to do this—you can't take a bribe, can't pervert justice, can't turn your eyes away from what is right. But that's what they're doing. They're using their position for power. Now it's nice that Samuel hadn't. It says they're not doing what their dad had done, but their dad had been good, had done what he was supposed to, had been honest, and had integrity. But his sons aren't.
We also see Samuel repeating what Eli had done. Where Eli's sons were wicked, Samuel's sons are wicked. Eli had helped raise Samuel, and Samuel has repeated some of this same stuff. But the situation is not good.
Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, "Behold, you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways." Which, I just think, "behold" makes it sound fancier, but if you translated it into South Carolina, it would be "look." So they go, "Look, you're old." Just like the start of this—they've all gathered together—they say, "Look, you're old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us, like all the nations."
But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to judge us." Samuel hears this and goes, "No, this isn't good. I don’t like this." And it's interesting to me because they do have a problem—the problem they have is that Samuel's old. His sons are judging them, and his sons aren't good. So that's going to be a problem; that's fair.
But there's more to that problem. The problem is that Samuel appointed those sons. So maybe one of the problems is that Samuel is bad at making appointments. The other problem is that Samuel, who's a judge, is just going to pass it along to his son. So maybe passing things down hereditarily isn't the best idea.
Do you see how their solution is dumb? Because they come to Samuel and they say, "You're not good at appointing people, and passing things along hereditarily doesn't seem great, so we'd like you to appoint a king so that can pass along his hereditary line." It's like y'all came up with a solution that fixes nothing. This is a bad plan. You just changed the name, but this isn't a good system.
But the response from Samuel is negative. The Hebrew literally says it was evil in his eyes—this is bad. The thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to judge us." And Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, "Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them."
So it seems as if Samuel took it some as a rejection of him. He's bothered by it, hurt by it. And God says, "There's more going on here. It's not just that they're rejecting you—they're rejecting me. I was their king. They're rejecting me as king over them." So it's not just that they're getting rid of you—they're getting rid of me.
And then he says, verse 8: "According to all the deeds that they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day—forsaking me and serving other gods—so they are also doing to you." God just says, "Look, I've been dealing with these people for a long time. This is what they do. Now you're sharing in it, but they've done this the whole time." And he ties this idea of wanting a king to idolatry. They're getting rid of God to serve other gods; they're getting rid of you—they want a king. This is what they do. They're rejecting me as king over them.
If we just had 1 Samuel, I think we'd say, "Yeah, asking for a king was wrong. They weren't supposed to do that." But there's a problem, because in Deuteronomy, in the law they already had, there's a provision for getting a king. There's permission for getting a king. So there's got to be more going on here. It can't just be that they asked for a king and that's bad because they're allowed to ask for a king.
We're going to read that passage in just a second. So it has to be something underneath that which we understand can happen. Jesus says this about the Pharisees: they pray long prayers for show. You might say, "Well, prayer is good, so praying longer must be good." And Jesus goes, "Yeah, it's not the prayer; it's what's going on underneath that."
So when we see that they were allowed to ask for a king but this one is immediately both God and Samuel are like, "This is bad," is that there's something else going on underneath it.
Let's look at what Deuteronomy says and try to understand how the kingship should work and what it says about it. Then we'll come back to Samuel.
This is Deuteronomy 17, starting at verse 14: "When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you"—which happened in Joshua and Judges, they're in the land, it's happening in Samuel—they possess it and dwell in it, and then say, "I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me."
Okay, so when you find out, Deuteronomy says you can have a king. The next thing I would want to say from Samuel is, "Ah, but they said 'like all the nations,' and that's their problem." They might have been quoting Deuteronomy. So they slapped a Bible verse on this, or it was really prophetic—what was written in Deuteronomy is exactly what you're going to do.
But they're coming and saying, "We want a king like all the nations." So it can't just be that phrase. But we're going to see that Deuteronomy subverts that. It basically says, "You're going to ask for a king like all the nations, and I'll tell you what kind of king you can have." And then it's very different from the kings of all the nations.
Here's the type of king they're allowed to have: "You may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose." So they're allowed to ask; God will pick somebody. So far, that seems like what they're doing. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you who is not your brother.
Okay, that's pretty straightforward. I don't think that's any different from how the other nations work; he's just saying he's got to be an Israelite. Okay, so far, tracking.
Verse 16: "Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, 'You shall never return that way again.'" So there are two things happening here. One, you're not allowed to go back to Egypt. The primary reason you'd want to go back to Egypt is to get horses. And you're not allowed to go get a bunch of horses—period.
What are horses good for? War. That's why a king wants many horses. You'll read in the Bible that the Israelites had a hard time because their enemies had many chariots—the war technology of the day. To have chariots, you needed horses and cavalry. So he says, "No, you can have a king, but he can't be trying to be powerful."
Next, "And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away." You can have a king, but he can't be trying to be powerful, and he can't want a bunch of women.
"Nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold." You all are familiar with what kings do—that's like their thing. "I want to be powerful; I want to be rich; bring out the women." That's kings forever, everywhere. So they say, "You want a king like the nations?" He goes, "You're allowed to have a king, and he can't be anything like the nations. He's not allowed to do all the basic king stuff."
Then he tells them what kind of king they're allowed to have: he can't be into warriors, women, or wealth.
Here's the type of king they can have: when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law approved by the Levitical priests. Here's what your king's going to do: he's not going to be rich or powerful; he can't have a lot of wives. But he does get to have the Levitical priests stand over him while he makes a hand copy of the Bible. If they don't like it, he starts over. This automatically puts the Levites above the king.
He's got to write his own copy of the Bible. Then it says, "And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes and doing them."
You know who your king is—he's the one guy in the kingdom who owns his own version of the Bible, and he reads it every day. Everybody else, the Levites have them, but y'all have to go to him. This guy's got his own copy, and he's going to read it every day. That's your kind of king.
It then says, "That his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers." He's going to read the Bible every day so he doesn't think he's better than y'all. Like a poor king without an army and without a bunch of wives who reads his Bible every day and doesn't think he's better than anybody—that's the kind of king they're allowed to have.
"He may not turn aside from the commandment either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children in Israel." You can have a servant king who leads you in worshiping God. You can have a servant king who loves his Bible. That is the kind of king you can have.
This is not what they were getting at.
But it just dawned on me—ladies, this is excellent dating advice. He needs to be a brother. Find a Christian. Most women, for some reason, are attracted to the same things that you are attracted to in kings.
"I want him to be really powerful. I want him to be a womanizer. Or I want him to be rich." No. That's cute at first, but it gets bad later.
What you need is the dude who's got his own copy of the Bible, carries it everywhere, reads it, and does it.
So, when y'all are out in the world trying to find a man and you see a dude with his Bible who follows it, who's not super caring about all the women, he's not trying to be the most powerful aggressive dude, and not rich—isn't that the thing that's drawing you? Then you get to say, "That's a king right there."
Just letting y'all know. You're welcome.
Back to 1 Samuel. It says, "Now then obey their voice, only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them." So God is telling Samuel, "All right, they can have a king, but you have to tell them what they're about to pick because this is what they're about to pick. They're messing this up. You have to explain it to them."
They're allowed to ask for one. Presumably, they could have come and said, "Hey, you're old, and your sons are awful. We've been reading Deuteronomy and we'd like a king like this." But that's not what they do.
They come and say, "We want one like the nations," not the king like the nations we asked for. Then we're going to do the subversive one God laid out for us—not this humble Bible king but one like the nations. That's what they're asking for.
So he says, "Explain to them what that will look like."
Verse 10: So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots."
Uh-oh, this king has a lot of horses. You guys, he's automatically got horses, horsemen, chariots. He broke rule number two. He's caring about power—that's all he's doing.
He says he will take your sons and appoint commanders of thousands and fifties, some to plow his ground, some to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He’s going to take and build up wealth and strength. That's what you're asking for.
He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. He will take the best of your fields, vineyards, and olive orchards, and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your grain and vineyards and give it to his officers and servants. He will take your male servants, female servants, best young men, and donkeys, and put them to his work.
He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.
He says he's going to take a tenth—you’re going to be his slaves. You all, that's the stuff that belonged to the Lord. They were to give all this to the Lord, to the Levites, and trust the Lord to protect and care for them. But he says, "You're bringing in a king who's going to claim it. He's going to claim your sons and daughters. You will be his slaves."
That's not how it was supposed to work. They were supposed to belong to the Lord, not to this guy. He says, "You're selling yourself to him. And in that day you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day."
You’re picking this, and it's going to go poorly. This is what you want. Then you're going to go to the Lord and say, "Help us." And He’s going to say, "No, I gave you what you wanted."
Which is scary. There are times when we're so frustrated with the Lord that He won't just give us what we want. Can't we just believe He’s good and that sometimes the things we want are bad? There are times where the Lord gives you exactly what you want —and that is not a blessing; it's a curse. So we can trust the Lord even when it doesn't seem like things are working the way we want.
He just says, "You're going to head this direction. This is what's going to happen."
I want to show you this: Exodus 19, when He's making the people of Israel. He's bringing them out. He says, "Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, if you'll stick to the book, if you'll follow the law, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples—for all the earth is mine—and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
So they were a kingdom, but not a kingdom with a king. They were a kingdom of priests. They did belong to somebody. They weren't slaves of a king. They were his treasured possession.
Do you know the system they had if they did it? They had Levites spread out that helped them know what was good and right and true. When they had issues, they would come, and the Levites would look in the law. If there was no clear answer, they could seek the Lord to give an answer to help go through disputes and fix things.
They had judges that would get raised up when there was a big problem—as long as they were repentant and faithful. We read this last week. They were before the Lord, fasting. They weren't ready for an army or war. God defended them, promising over and over that he would care for them and defend them, raise up judges.
Do you know judges only worked with volunteer armies? They said, "Who's with me? Let's go."
They didn't conscript people. When God was with a judge leading by the spirit, they won; God protected them. They didn't have taxes. Kings couldn't claim people, take donkeys, or slaves. The people were servants, and Levites were cared for by the people giving graciously to the Lord and to the system he set up.
They didn't have a king. They were to relate to God through the Levites. As long as they did that, God said, "I'll smash anyone who messes with you." And he did.
So they're coming and saying, "We don't want that system. We just want a dude to do this stuff."
But this is verse 19: "But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel and said, 'No, there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations. And that our king may judge us and go before us and fight our battles.'"
That's key to understanding part of what's going on in their heart. What the problem is here.
So we're going to come back to that. Just want to finish reading this.
When Samuel heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, "Obey their voice and make them a king." Samuel then said to the men of Israel, "Go every man to his city."
So Samuel's told, "No, give them a king. That's all they want to do." Then Samuel says, "All right, everybody go home." And maybe he said more, but that's all we get. That's the gist. Go home. And he's going to do it.
As it moves forward, we’ll see what happens.
But I want you to see what they're really asking for and what's happening here.
I've got—you know these are the problems here: they're going to be his slaves. They want him to judge them, which is govern, rule, tell them what's right and wrong, make decisions for them. They want him to go out and fight their battles. But throughout their history, God is the one who goes out and fights their battles.
Even with Gideon, at one point God tells Gideon, "You have too many people. Later, you’ll think you did this." So Gideon stands in front of his army and says, "Who here is scared?" And most of them go home. God says, "Still too many." He does this weird test to see who drinks like a dog. Those he takes. Then they win with lamps and yelling because God was fighting their battles.
This is what Joshua tells them: "One man puts to flight a thousand, since it is the Lord your God who fights for you, just as he promised."
So they said, "No, we want this guy to fight for us." And Samuel looked at them and said, "Y'all know it's your sons who are fighting, right? You're thinking this guy's going to fight, but he's going to take your kids, and they're going to fight for him. They won't have any choice."
They said, "We want him to judge us." But it was the Levites and God who judged them, choosing right and wrong, going to the scriptures. If the text said it, that's what they did. If something wasn't covered, they could inquire of the Lord.
They said, "No, we won't. We just want a guy to do it." But you're supposed to be the Lord's treasured possession, and they're like, "Nah, we'll just serve someone."
This is a problem.
I want to point out something that should resonate with us and that we should consider: what they wanted was a quick fix.
And y'all, don't you just want a quick fix? Don't you want something that just fixes it real fast? That's what I want. We love our American culture. We love quick fixes.
We're all about it. A tip, a trick, a hack. We love to know a guy: "Is there just a guy who can do that? Do we know a guy?" "I got a guy," but I can't tell you about my guy because then he'd be your guy and I can't do you.
We do this. We want just a technique, a difference. They're like, "Ah, these judges aren't working. Let's call them kings. Just change the technique."
We love data. We're going to find the best way. We're going to figure out what the right answer is. We're going to read the right book, and that'll give us the right system.
How many books have you read that gave you a system, and you found out later you had to do the system? It was a nice technique, but you actually needed diligence and stamina and personal growth. Not doing that.
Let me get on Instagram and see if someone else can tell me something that sounds nice, and I'll pretend to do this for a week.
Do y'all realize that what they need is growth? What they need is development. What they need is a relationship with the Lord. What they need is to be diligent in what he's already given them.
They don't need a new technique. They don't need a quick fix. This isn't going to solve the problem.
They're like, "Let him fight the battles." But those are going to be your kids. You're not even thinking this through.
How much do we just want a trick or a pill or a TED talk, or is there just something that'll fix it?
We actually just need to grow as people, repent, develop.
Yeah, I like books. I read books. I got a stack of books I plan to read this year. I'm in the middle of reading four books because I apparently can't read one at a time. I'm all over the place. But you just need this one, right? If you're going to try to navigate romance and marriage or money, parenting, leading a household, or work—you really just need this one. You can pick up a tip or trick here and there. You can hear what some psychologist says about a good way to talk to kids or whatever. That's fine. Anything helpful is helpful. But you still got to do it, and you still got to do it as a person who looks like they belong to Jesus.
Some things that psychologists say are dumb. Just because a therapist said it... I meet a person, and I'm like, "Okay, do they know the Lord? Do they love the Bible? Or are they stupid?" I mean, you could just be getting stuff Marks made up? Marks good? Maybe. But not Marks—that's not who I was looking for! Who am I looking for? Freud, thank you. That's who I was looking for.
We can take shots at Marks, too, but I wasn't meaning to do that today.
Do you know what I mean? Like, what are we doing? You just need your own copy that you read every day, so you don't turn to the right or to the left.
They wanted a quick fix, but the Bible gives us everything we need for life and godliness—everything we need to navigate all the stuff we've got going on.
So if you're like, "I don't know if I've read the right books," just keep reading this one.
There's another thing going on here I think we need to consider.
When they came and made this request, they were trying to swap God out. And I think we can do the same thing as long as we keep him out of these categories.
We can just have something that fits in those categories for us.
We've got a king that we're serving, and I think there are a lot of things that can fit those categories.
I want to take a second for you to consider. I'm going to give you some examples, and we're going to consider them this morning:
What gets your best? What are you a slave to? What do you serve? What gets your best effort? What gets your energy? What drives you? So you're a slave to it, not the Lord.
It makes your decisions. How do you know what's right and good? Which one saves us money? Which one makes us more money? How do you know which job to take? It's real easy—skim to the bottom. How much are they paying? Should I move? I don't know. Are they going to pay more?
Your whole life pulled around by money. "Should we go here? Should we not? Should I have this? Should I not?"
It's just based on money. So it governs you. It's your judge.
How do you know you're safe?
How do you know you're winning? That's easy: it's a dollar amount in a bank.
"I know I'm winning in life because I made more money this year than last year."
So we can do that with money.
We can do that with romance. You can be a slave to a relationship, and you can say, "Well, marriage is good. Romance is good. This stuff is fine."
Yeah. We can ask for a king.
Where's your heart? How's that working?
Some people follow Jesus until they get a boyfriend or girlfriend, and then they're willing to sin with them.
Who's your master? Who are you a slave to?
What's getting your best?
Does it govern your life? Is that how you make decisions?
"I'll change this. I'll change anything as long as I can stay in a relationship."
As long as I can have my romantic life work out.
It doesn't have anything to do with what the Bible says or what I ought to do or not do.
Where I ought to go or not go, what's right or wrong.
I'm not trusting the word; I'm just trusting this will keep me in or get me out of a relationship.
How do you know you're winning? How do you know you're safe? "I only feel okay when I'm in a relationship."
That's how I know I'm okay as a person. That's how I know I'm safe, as long as someone is here and loves me, and says they love me, and I'll do whatever as long as it's that.
Children—children are a blessing from the Lord.
But there's a way that they get your best.
When they're little, they get everything. You get used to that because that's part of what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to care for your children, right? The Bible says to.
But there's a way where they get your devotion. They get your heart, and the Lord doesn't. You say, "Well, my kids don't govern my life."
Well, is your whole schedule built around what league they want to be in? Did you pick your neighborhood based on your children? Did you move to another part of the city based off your children? Did you pick your church based off your children?
It's possible they're the judge that sets what's right and wrong, good and bad, for you.
You're not following the Lord. You're not studying the word.
Having children who are following the Lord with you is one thing, but if they're setting the pace, how do you know you're okay? How do you know you're safe?
"How do I know I'm winning? As long as my kids turn out okay, I'll know."
Oh my gosh, that's a lot of pressure on your children. "Hey, I need you to save me." That's rough. It's not good for you or for them.
You can put happiness there. You can put anything you want. There could be a whole thing that decides those things for us.
"How do you decide what's right or wrong? Well, this made me unhappy, so I know it's wrong. This makes me happy, so I know it's right."
God wants us to be happy. Yes, ultimately endlessly happy in him—not short-term, unrepentantly, sinfully happy. Not at all.
He hates that so much that he would die for it. Jesus died for it.
But he also loves you so much and desires your happiness so much that he died for it.
He might rescue you and make you part of him.
But that's not a way to judge your life.
That's what four-year-olds do, but that’s not what we're to do.
“How do you know you’re okay? How do you know you’re safe? How do you know you’re winning?”
“As long as I feel good?”
That’s insanity.
What Samuel and God want in this passage is for God to be king.
What Deuteronomy wants is a king who loves the Lord as primary, who humbles himself, and serves his brothers.
And both of those hopes and wishes are fulfilled in Christ.
Jesus is God who came as king to humble himself, to serve his brothers, to be the incarnate Word who carried it around everywhere, did not lift himself above his brothers, but died for them so they might be welcomed.
Do you understand that the hope of Deuteronomy, the hope of Samuel, and our collective hope is found in Christ alone?
That’s the kind of king we want.
That’s who we want to be a treasured possession of.
That’s who we want judging us and leading us.
That’s how we want to know who’s fighting our battles and caring for us—Christ and Christ alone.
So we’re going to take communion and celebrate that.
That’s the king we have, who loved, served, rescued, humbled himself to bring his brothers to life and hope, who cares for us, fights our battles, and whom we can trust when things aren’t going the way we want.
But I want you to take a second.
The band’s going to come up and begin to play.
I want you to take a second and ask yourself those questions:
What’s getting my best?
What am I using to make the big decisions in my life?
Is it prayer? Is it church family? Is it the Word? Or is it something else?
How do I tell myself I’m winning? How do I tell myself I’m safe? How do I know I’m okay?
I want you to repent. Talk to the Lord and say, "I don’t want this king. I want you to be my king."
Then take communion and celebrate that you have a good king.
If you are not a Christian, Christ is for you.
Communion is not something for outsiders. It's a celebration where we remind ourselves that his body was broken, his blood was shed, and we have hope in him and him alone.
If you're not a Christian, you don’t know that yet, you don’t understand that yet.
What I would say is: you get to evaluate your life and say, "Yeah, Jesus isn’t my king, but I want him to be because he’s good, forgiving, and there’s hope."
We would love to baptize you, to celebrate that publicly, and then you can take communion.
Let’s pray.
Lord Jesus, you are a good king.
We ask that by the power of your Spirit, by the truth of your Word, all usurping kings would be removed from thrones today.
That everything else that sits in our hearts to judge, defend, to protect us, that claims it can fight our battles, everything that we are slaves to, that gets our best, and that we submit ourselves to—Lord, may you rule and reign over our hearts.
May we repent, may we come to you in forgiveness and mercy, and may we serve and follow you all the days of our lives.
May your name be praised. Amen.
1 Samuel 6-7:2
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.