The First King of Israel

Austin Cressman

1 Samuel • Sermon • Submitted 8 months ago • Presented 8 months ago

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Saul Rejected, Another Anointed.

(Have a student come up to pray)

Hey guys! Glad you are all here. If you are new, welcome we are so glad you are here! We want to let you guys know that this is something we do every week where we ask you guys to listen as we dive into the Word of God that is the Bible, and we work together to kind of work out how to live rightly for Jesus.

Lets do a recap of the last couple weeks. We are following the story of Israel in the time of Samuel the Prophet.

In our first week we saw how God had called Israel to be

set apart

And Israel disobeyed by doing what?

Demanding a king

Last week, we read how Saul was anointed to be King of Israel, and that God is bigger than our…?

Disobedience

This week, we are going to continue the story of Saul’s early fledgling kingship. We did not get to read through it together last week, but its written that after Saul is anointed, he rallies Israel to arms and is victorious over the philistines. Needless to say, the Israelites are very happy with their king and are probably feeling pretty darn good about themselves.

The New International Version Chapter 14

After Saul had assumed rule over Israel, he fought against their enemies on every side: Moab, the Ammonites, Edom, the kings of Zobah, and the Philistines. Wherever he turned, he inflicted punishment on them. 48 He fought valiantly and defeated the Amalekites, delivering Israel from the hands of those who had plundered them.

Through God’s power and the Holy Spirit inside of Saul, Israel is now the number one threat in the world and it is not close. Just like the nation of Israel wanted, they have been delivered.

But, this streak of victory does not last long. This is not because God decided, okay that is enough victory and prosperity for you, now I’m going to turn my back on you and you will suck again…No that is not at all what happens here.

You can imagine Saul, having not one loss since the beginning of his reign, he is starting to feel good. He is starting to think… praise God that we are winning our battles… but maybe I am the perfect guy for this job. Maybe all these victories are because of my leadership skills, not to mention my rugged good looks. But praise God!

How easy is it for us to say that we give God the praise, but in our heads and our hearts, we really are proud of ourselves and our abilities. Every gift that we have is from the Lord, so we are foolish to take glory for ourselves instead of giving it to God.

Anyway, the point is that Saul is probably starting to lose his grounding and he is probably starting to take less and less advice from his Godly advisors.

I don’t know if anyone has read Lord of the Rings? Anyone?

Well here is a speculation that I have about Saul relating to LOTR. In the city of Rohan which was a large kingdom known for their Horseback-riding knights. The king’s name was Theoden. He was a strong and noble king. Until at one point this man named Grma Wormtongue snuck his way into the higher ranks of the kingdom until he was the direct advisor of king Theoden. His intent was malicious and he was actually working for the enemy as he influenced the king. He made it sound like he was on the kings side, but really he wanted his downfall.

Out of pure speculation and just Austin’s thoughts here, I bet that Saul had something similar going on here. I bet there were evil advisors in the court that had king Saul’s ear and broke him in to the pride in his heart.

Samuel approaches Saul in the start of chapter 15 after numerous victories and tells him the next message from the Lord. God wanted Saul to punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel. So the instruction was for Saul to go and attack them, and destroy everything. And I mean everything. He was instructed to not spare anything or anyone, no people, no possesions, no cattle or donkeys, no nothing.

Okay pause, I can’t just go past that without addressing that. As much as it would be easier to do that. Why did God specifically ask His people to have no mercy against this pagan nation? That does not feel right does it? It doesn’t sit right with us. This is a question that takes a lot of time to unpack, and we only have a little time tonight, so feel free to come talk to me about this afterwards or another time, but just quickly.

First, these pagan nations were not good people, as a matter of fact none of us are good. You may look to your left or right and think that the person sitting next to you is a really solid person. Maybe not perfect but a really great person all around. Maybe we even think we are pretty good all around ourselves. But this is not the truth!

We are ALL sinners. Every single one of us. The bible says that the no one is naturally good. It also says that the payment, the cost, for every sin is death. We all deserve to die. In fact, the only one who ever lived that did not deserve to die was Jesus, and what did He do for us? that’s correct. He died the worst death possible for us.

In that light, God is the essence of good, God created what “good” is. So anything that God does is naturally “good.”

Another thing, God loves justice and God is justice.

He was asking Saul and Israel to execute His Justice.

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