Saul: Standing Tall, Falling Hard

So he said, “Bring me the burnt offering and the fellowship offerings.” And Saul offered up the burnt offering. Just as he finished making the offering, Samuel arrived, and Saul went out to greet him. “What have you done?” asked Samuel.

Saul replied, “When I saw that the men were scattering, and that you did not come at the set time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Mikmash, I thought, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the LORD’s favor. ’ So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering.”

“You have done a foolish thing, ” Samuel said. “You have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you; if you had, He would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the LORD has sought out a man after His own heart and appointed him ruler of His people, because you have not kept the LORD’s command.” (1 Samuel 13:9-14 NIV)

Samuel serves as Israel's last Judge and first major prophet after Moses. Hannah, Samuel's mother, is barren and heartbroken. On top of that, her husband, Elkanah, has a second wife who has given him children, and who provokes Hannah about her barrenness. In brokenhearted desperation, Hannah prays to God to give her a son, and promises to dedicate him to the Lord and His service. God hears Hannah's prayer, and Samuel is born. Hannah keeps her promise and takes Samuel to live with Eli, the priest, at the Lord's tabernacle.

It may seem like our tender God is simply responding to the prayer of one of His desperate daughters. While that is true, He is doing more. God is raising up Samuel to be a mighty Judge and Prophet in the crucial time in Israel's history when there is transition from Judges to their first King. God will use Samuel to deal with the brokenness and distortions of His holy covenant people.

Eli's sons, Hophni and Phineas, serve as priests with their father. But they are selfish and disrespectful. They take the choicest parts of the meat of the sacrifices for themselves, when God reserved them for the people who make the sacrifices. From God's point of view, they treat the very sacrifices He has given to forgive and heal His people with contempt. They also sleep with the women who served at the tabernacle, committing what amounts to sexual abuse from their positions of power. Eli rebukes his sons for their impropriety, but does not discipline them or rein in their behavior.

Samuel's first prophecy as a young boy has God speak words of judgment on Eli and Hophni and Phineas for their phoniness. Later, when the Philistines capture the Ark of the Lord in battle, Hophni, Phineas and Eli all three die on the same day as God's judgment on their sins lands on them. Samuel stands for faithfulness in the face of the hypocrisy of false religion.

Later the leaders of Israel come to their Judge, Samuel, with this request:

So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.” (1 Samuel 8:4-5 NIV)

They want to be like the other nations around them who rely on the power of their king for security and prosperity. But God wants to be their King. Samuel is angry, and God tells him, “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king." (1 Samuel 8:7 NIV)

God's whole point in raising up a family to be a nation He calls His own is to have that nation demonstrate His reality and nature to the world. They are called to be people who live by His Law with Yahweh as their King. God's people are always called to be a unique, special, distinct people who live in the world but not of it. In living out the Lordship of Jesus Christ as our King, we make His reality known in a world that does not follow Him.

Samuel anoints Saul as the first King of Israel. Saul starts out well, obeying Samuel's instructions and actually being filled with the Holy Spirit and himself prophesying (see 1 Samuel 10:8-10). But things take a turn for the worse almost immediately. Samuel tells Saul to return to Gilgal and wait seven days for Samuel to arrive and give Him the Lord's next instructions. Samuel goes to Gilgal and waits - six and a half days.

The Philistines amass for war, and Saul's troops begin to desert him. He takes things into his own hands and offers the sacrifices that only God's prophets and priests are allowed to offer. To be fair, Saul is in desperate straits. Samuel seems to be delayed. His men are deserting. The battle looks unwinnable. But in reality, he was given one command, and failed to keep it with his whole heart. Turning to our own solutions when God doesn't seem to be moving is essentially saying to the Lord, "I don't trust you." It is saying to Him, "My timing is better than your timing. I'll take care of this myself."

Disobedience is a grave distortion of the God we trust and His nature to the world around us. Trust (faith) ought always to lead to obedience. The heart of the matter is the heart. Saul's heart trusted more in himself than in his God. And so do we - far too often. Our actions reveal whether or not we have faith in our heart.

When we disobey God, we distort how the world sees Him. We are representatives of God in the world. You are the only Bible some people will ever read. If they don't see God in your obedience to Him, they will likely not see Him at all, since they will likely never attend church or read a Bible. Our faith and our faithfulness matter - to our families, to our neighborhoods, to our workplaces and schools, to our community and to our world.

Samuel was faithful to God all the days of his life. Saul started in faithfulness, but veered into disobedience. Let's be more like Samuel, and less like Saul in walking with our King, Jesus!