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Tag: Samuel

Saul & the Rare Medium

Two weeks ago, we saw that the Philistines were preparing to go to war against the Israelites. Now of course, that’s not unusual – as you read through the Old testament, it seems these two nations are always preparing to go to war with each other. But this time is a little different. This time, David, the future king of Israel, is preparing to fight alongside the Philistines against the Israelites!

You’ll remember that David had fled from Saul and had found refuge among his enemies – the Philistines. They had accepted him as a defector from Israel and had even given David his own Philistine city to live in – the city of Ziklag – and David lived there for nearly a year and a half with his 600 men and all of their families.

Of course, during all this time, David had been lying to the Philistine King – King Achish – about his true loyalties – and more specifically about his true military expeditions. For those 16 months, David had actually been raiding the enemies of Israel, but he told Achish that he had been raiding Israel itself.

And so Achish was convinced that David had turned against his homeland and would be a loyal Philistine subject for the rest of his life. Therefore, when the time came that the Philistines were preparing a full scale invasion of Israel, King Achish expected David to be a key part of that.

1 Samuel 28 begins like this:

About that time the Philistines mustered their armies for another war with Israel. King Achish told David, “You and your men will be expected to join me in battle.”

2 “Very well!” David agreed. “Now you will see for yourself what we can do.”

Then Achish told David, “I will make you my personal bodyguard for life.”

1 Samuel 28:1-2

It’s seems crazy that King Achish would place so much trust in David – the very guy who killed the Philistine champion Goliath some years earlier! But none the less, at this point, we are left wondering, what in the world will David do now? Will he actually join the Philistines and fight against the Israelites – fighting against Saul and his best friend Jonathan? Or perhaps will David turn on king Achish in the heat of the battle and join forces with the Israelites? Or will something even more unexpected happen?

Well, unfortunately, we’re not going to find out until next week, because at this point, without any resolution, the story shifts the spotlight back over to King Saul.

From verse 3 and on, it’s like an entirely different story as we see how Saul reacts to this imminent battle against the Philistines. Now of course, both stories are woven together and we’ll see that more and more as we go on, but today’s passage will revolve exclusively around Saul.

Now at first glance, verse 3 seems kinda out of place itself. It reads kinda like some random facts that don’t have any apparent connection to the story at all. Let me show you what I mean. Verse 3 reads like this:

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David & Nabal

For the last couple of months as we’ve been going through the book of 1 Samuel, our Sunday morning messages have revolved primarily around the conflict between King Saul and his son-in-law David. This conflict started off as merely a little bit of jealousy, but it grew to become fear and paranoia, as Saul become convinced that David was conspiring against him to take his throne and to overthrow his kingdom. Eventually, David had to flee from Saul, running for his life as Saul relentlessly tried to capture and kill him. Now of course, David had no desire to undermine or overthrow Saul – even though God had promised David that he would one day be king. In fact, in just the last chapter, we saw that David had the perfect opportunity to kill Saul if he had wanted to, but he refused to do it.

1 Samuel chapter 24 tells us that as Saul was hunting for David, he went into a certain cave for a bathroom break, and would’t you know it – David and his men were hiding in the back of that very cave! Now if David truly were trying to kill Saul, he could very easily have done so in that moment – but he refused to harm Saul – and instead, he merely crept up and secretly cut off a corner of Saul’s robe.

Well, when Saul left the cave, David hollered after him from a safe distance and showed him the the fabric that he had cut off – proving to Saul that David could have killed him, but didn’t. This deeply convicted Saul who finally admitted that David was a better man than he and that David would indeed be a great king over Israel.

Now at that point, Saul humbly returned home, but David remained out in the wilderness with his men – which leads us to today’s story. It seems that Saul isn’t the only source of trouble for David. Even with Saul temporarily out of the picture, we’re going to see today, that David still has to deal with difficult people. And for anyone who’s had to deal with difficult people, (which I’m pretty sure is all of us) I think there might just be some valuable lessons for us all in today’s story.

Our study of 1 Samuel now brings us to chapter 25 and it begins like this:

Now Samuel died, and all Israel gathered for his funeral. They buried him at his house in Ramah. Then David moved down to the wilderness of Maon. 2 There was a wealthy man from Maon who owned property near the town of Carmel. He had 3,000 sheep and 1,000 goats, and it was sheep-shearing time. 3 This man’s name was Nabal, and his wife, Abigail, was a sensible and beautiful woman. But Nabal, a descendant of Caleb, was crude and mean in all his dealings.

1 Samuel 25:1b-3

The chapter begins with a brief mention of Samuel’s death and burial. We haven’t heard much about the prophet Samuel recently, but it was Samuel who had anointed both Saul and then later David as kings of Israel. We also know that Samuel had been a key supporter of David… In fact, according to chapter 19, David even went to live with Samuel for a while when he first fled from Saul. So no doubt, Samuel’s death would have a been a difficult loss for David. And while the Bible doesn’t specifically say so, this sense of loss and grief could end up being a factor in some of David’s decisions later on in the story. So maybe just log that bit of information away in your mind for the time being and we’ll touch on that again in a little while.

But after Samuel’s death, David and his men returned to the wilderness of Maon – they had been there previously – back when Saul almost caught David at the place now called the Rock of escape (you’ll remember we talked about that a few weeks ago.)

But now in Maon, we are introduced to two other characters in this story. We have Nabal – who was a wealthy sheep farmer and was known for being crude and mean in all his dealings. And then we have his wife, Abigail, who was known for being sensible and beautiful! 

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God’s Purposes Will Prevail

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at the rise of David and the fall of Saul. As we’ve gone through 1 Samuel 18, we’ve seen how Saul’s jealousy of David has driven him to secretly plot the murder of his most successful military commander. We’ve seen three attempts by Saul to have David killed – and all the while, appearing to be David’s #1 fan!

His first attempt to kill David was probably the most difficult for Saul to appear innocent, as Saul whipped a spear at David, intending to pin him to the wall! 

That doesn’t seem very subtle – but because of the tormenting spirit that had plagued Saul, this incident may have been brushed off as almost accidental – temporary insanity might be the claim. Of course, I don’t know exactly how Saul explained his actions that day, but he seemed to convince David to forgive and forget what he had done. And David, not one to hold a grudge, obliged and faithfully continued in Saul’s service.

Saul’s next scheme to kill David was a little less obvious. He offered David his daughter Merab as a wife, with the condition that David prove himself first by fighting the Lord’s battles. Of course, Saul hoped that one those battles would be the end of David – that David would be killed by the Philistines and then Saul wouldn’t have to do it himself!

However, David turned down Saul’s offer to marry Merab – stating in essence, that he was unworthy to be the king’s son-in-law. His family were simple sheep farmers, not royalty! And so David humbly declined Saul’s offer – thwarting Saul’s plan to have him killed by the Philistines – and thus Merab was given to someone else.

But then, Saul discovered that his other daughter Michal was in love with David. And so he made the offer again to David to become his son-in-law! But this time, Saul convinced some of his men to encourage David to accept the King’s offer! And to make things even easier for David – Saul declared that the only dowry or brideprice that he wanted was the death of his enemies – 100 Philistine foreskins would be enough!

Saul was sure that the mighty warrior David would take up this offer and in his attempts to kill 100 Philistines, Dave would surely be killed the fight!

However, Saul had forgotten to take into account the fact that God was with David and gave him success in everything he did! And as it happened, David and his men went out and killed 200 Philistines and David payed double Saul’s price to marry his daughter, Michal.

And so the chapter concludes with Saul’s plots being foiled yet again – and David having nothing but success and prosperity! Let me read those final verses of chapter 18 for you as we lead into chapter 19 today…

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The Lord Looks at the Heart

This morning we begin a new chapter in 1 Samuel – both literally and figuratively. Of course, we literally begin a new chapter just about every week, but today the direction of our story really takes a significant turn.

Today we are introduced to David.

Did you know that David is the most mentioned person in the Bible aside from Jesus Himself? David is mentioned by name over 900 times – that’s 3 times as often as Abraham – who is considered to be the Father of Israel! Of the 66 books of the Bible, David is mentioned in 28 of them!

As you go through the Old Testament prophecies, the promised Messiah is constantly connected with David and his kingdom. In the New Testament, that theme continues and Jesus is even referred to as the Son of David. If you remember the story of blind Bartimaeus, that’s how he refers to Jesus. In Mark 10:47….

When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus of Nazareth was nearby, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Mark 10:47

David is obviously a very significant figure not only in the history of Israel, but in God’s overarching plan of Salvation for mankind! So I think it’ll be great to go through his life and perhaps see why God chose David to be such an integral part of the Salvation story.

I think I mentioned back 17 sermons ago when I started this series that the whole reason I wanted to go through the book of Samuel was to study the life of David! He’s such an interesting  and unique character – and of course, David’s life is filled with incredible stories. 

Slaying the giant Goliath, fleeing from the mad King Saul, pretending to be crazy himself to escape from the Philistines, leading his ever growing band of mighty men in great exploits against the enemy, rising from shepherd boy to King of Isreal, committing murder and adultery, but repenting and being called a man after God’s own heart, fleeing from his own son who tries to take his throne, and through it all composing hundreds of songs and poems to God that make up a significant portion of our Bible today.

David’s story is really incredible and I’m super excited to learn from his life as we go through these next chapters together.

To start off this morning, I just want to remind you where we left off last week. King Saul had been chosen by God to be the first King of Israel, and while Saul had been very successful in his military endeavours, he had been an utter failure in his relationship with God. Twice now Saul has been rebuked by the prophet Samuel for his disobedience. And because Saul had not been loyal to God, God has declared that Saul’s Kingdom will be torn away from him and given to another man – a man after God’s own heart!

But we closed the last chapter with both God and Samuel grieving over Saul’s foolish choices. The final verse we read tells us:

35 Samuel never went to meet with Saul again, but he mourned constantly for him. And the Lord was sorry he had ever made Saul king of Israel.

1 Samuel 15:35

It’s certainly not a very positive note and things are not looking very hopeful for the future of Israel. However, God’s purposes would not be thwarted by a disobedient King. God had already planned and accounted for all this and God was prepared to move forward with or without Saul. So we turn now to 1 Samuel chapter 16 to literally and figuratively begin this new chapter in the story of Samuel. Verse 1 begins like this:

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Obedience Is Better Than Sacrifice

For the past few weeks we’ve been following the career of King Saul – the first King of Israel. And it’s really been a mixed bag of the good, the bad, and the ugly. There are times when Saul does a fantastic job as king. As you read through 1 Samuel, often Saul is presented as the hero of Israel – rescuing the nation from all it’s enemies!

For example, at the end of the chapter we read last week, we find a bit of a summary of Saul’s military success. If you look at 1 Samuel 14, verse 47, it reads like this:

47 Now when Saul had secured his grasp on Israel’s throne, he fought against his enemies in every direction—against Moab, Ammon, Edom, the kings of Zobah, and the Philistines. And wherever he turned, he was victorious. 48 He performed great deeds and conquered the Amalekites, saving Israel from all those who had plundered them.

Then we get a brief summary of Saul’s family tree – which I won’t read right now – and then verse 52 continues…

52 The Israelites fought constantly with the Philistines throughout Saul’s lifetime. So whenever Saul observed a young man who was brave and strong, he drafted him into his army.

1 Samuel 14:47-48, 52

So as you can see, from a military point of view, Saul was a very successful King. It says he saved Israel from all who had plundered them. Where ever he turned, he was victorious! In the eyes of the people of Israel, Saul was exactly the kind of King that they wanted.

However, in the eyes of God, King Saul had not been quite so successful. Two weeks ago, we saw how Saul disobeyed the command of the Lord by offering up a burnt offering to God – instead of waiting for the prophet Samuel – who was the only one God had authorized to make such an offering. Saul over-stepped the bounds of his God-given authority as King, and took the role of priest for himself. And as we’re going to see today, this wasn’t just an isolated incident of sin –  It wasn’t a one-time foolish choice in a moment of weakness – this was evidence of a heart that would increasingly become prideful and arrogant.

Although Saul had very humble beginnings, it seems that his position of power and his military success caused him to grow in his esteem of himself and decrease in his esteem of God and his commands.

And so today, as we turn to 1 Samuel chapter 15, we’re going to see this pattern continue – with Saul concluding that his ways and his decisions are just a little bit wiser than God’s ways and God’s decisions. But I should warn you… As we go through this story and see how foolish and arrogant Saul has become, we need to be careful, because we might just see ourselves doing the exact same thing…

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Ritual or Relationship

Over these past months, we have been reading through the book of 1 Samuel and last week we finally completed the transition from the era of the judges to the era of the kings. For many years after conquering the Promised Land, Israel had been led by judges – men and women whom God raised up at just the right time to rescue Israel from its enemies. But in recent days, the people of Israel had asked God for a king to lead them. They wanted to be like all the nations around them and have their king lead them into battle. Of course, this was really a rejection of God as their King, but God graciously decided to honour their request and to give them the king that they so desired.

And so God instructed Samuel, the final judge of Israel, to anoint Saul as Israel’s King. And last week we saw how Samuel then passed the baton of leadership to King Saul – firmly establishing Saul as Israel’s new leader. 

However, in his final address to the nation, Samuel solemnly warned Saul and all the people, that their obedience to God would determine their future fate. We read his words in 1 Samuel 12:24….

24 But be sure to fear the Lord and faithfully serve him. Think of all the wonderful things he has done for you. 25 But if you continue to sin, you and your king will be swept away.” 1 Samuel 12:34-25

Samuel makes it very clear that the success of Israel and its new King would depend solely on their decision obey the Lord or not.

And as we turn to chapter 13 today, that’s exactly the decision that will be put to the test. Will Saul and the people of Israel fear the Lord and faithfully serve Him? Or will they continue to sin – choosing instead to follow their own way? Let’s find out!

1 Samuel chapter 13 begins like this:

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