The King's Vow pt 2
Heroes and Villains: The Rise and Fall of Saul • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Transcript
Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It is an honor to share the Word of God with the saints of Durbin Memorial Baptist Church.
I want to begin this morning by explaining a paradigm for ministry that I hold to with the intended purpose of giving ultimate glory to God through the gathering of His people.
Ligon Duncan has put together a great list of five things the church is to do when they gather together.
Read the Bible
Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.
Preach the Bible
preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.
Pray the Bible
I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling;
Sing the Bible
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
See the Bible
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Next week we will be having the Lord’s Supper with the intention of Seeing the Bible, that is seeing the truths of Scripture put forth in a tangible way, remembering what the Lord has done for us through His life, death, and resurrection as atonement for sin. We do that when we take communion. We also do that when we celebrate baptism. That is a public declaration and identification of how Christ has saved the individual and sealed them with the Holy Spirit.
So when we gather together here at church, our primary goal is to give God glory through the reading, preaching, praying, singing, and seeing of God’s Word.
It is because of this commitment that as a church we do not change a lot of things or add a lot of pomp and circumstance when secular holidays come about. Things like the Fourth of July, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Memorial Day, Veteran’s Day. There is most definitely nothing wrong with celebrating those days. Each of those days give extra focus onto specific blessings the Lord has given us. That’s why they are usually mentioned in our gathering, but we intentionally do not revolve the service around those days. We are here to serve the Lord and grow in our praise to Him.
So on most of these holidays I will acknowledge what day it is either through a sermon illustration or within the pastoral prayer, but by and large the service is dedicated to continuing on in our study of God’s Word.
I’m telling you this for two reasons:
It is important for us to be on the same page. I don’t want anything to think that I just forgot it was Mother’s Day or that I’m some sort of communist for not having a bigger flag on the 4th of July. I enjoy both of those days. But when we gather together, our PRIMARY concern is hearing, preaching, and proclaiming the Word of God. It’s my hope and intention that we put those good things to the side and are filled with the greater edification for the glory of God. Celebrate those days, but when we come together I want us to be reminded, “What can wash away my sins, NOTHING BUT THE BLOOD OF JESUS.”
I also wanted to bring this up because traditionally in churches that do heavy celebratory acts for Mother’s and Father’s Day, there is a pattern that emerges. Mothers on Mothers Day are encouraged to continue the great care they give to their children. And then Fathers on Fathers Day, however, are often raked over the coals for the ways they have forsaken their duties as Fathers. Now, I have a lot to say about Biblical manhood and the role of the father, that is why I am so fired up for the Sons of Thunder class we are starting this coming Wednesday.
But when it comes to our Sunday Morning Message, I am committed to exegetical, expository preaching through a text. I believe that is the best approach to preaching because it prevents us from glossing over uncomfortable topics, as well as it models good study of God’s Word to be applied for daily use in your own studies. Walk through and chew on every Word of Scripture.
I say all this because it is unplanned, almost ironic, and providential that today, on Father’s Day, we would be looking at a section of Scripture that shows the massive shortcomings of a father and the rift that existed between him and his son. While I intended to be on chapter 15 this morning when I was fleshing out my study calendar some weeks ago, this is where the Lord would have us today.
If you haven’t already, please open your Bibles to 1 Samuel 14. 1 Samuel 14. Today we are going to be picking up where we left off last time finishing in verse 32.
Let’s frame where we are at in this story. In the beginning of chapter 14 King Saul’s son Jonathan goes off with his armor bearer and defeats a Philistine Garrison. This galvanizes all of Israel which had been terrified by the mighty Philistine army. So now instead of hiding as they had been, Israel is fighting back against the Philistines. Saul, the king of Israel who recently found out that title would be taken from him, commands the army not to take any of the spoil or even eat a morsel of food. The men of Israel follow Saul’s command. Except for Jonathan. He didn’t know about his father’s vow because he had been too busy actually fighting against the Philistines. He takes a bite of honey and the soldiers around him flip out. They told him that the King commanded them not to do that. Jonathan tells the army that his father’s oath was misguided. He tells them it would’ve been better, the victory would’ve been sweeter, had that vow not have happened. So the battle continues and night fall comes. The Israelites are now able to eat and they ravage into anything they can get their hands on. The major problem we find is that because they were so hungry after following Saul’s command they sinned against God’s commands. They ate the blood along with the animals. When we looked at this last week we focussed on the idea of unbiblical demands leading to unbiblical results. Saul gave them restrictions greater than the commands of Scripture which directly led to a desperate people sinning against God.
Today we will be seeing more of the Ludicrous Legalism present in Saul before we see how that effects his relationship with his son Jonathan towards the end.
Where we are picking up this morning, Saul has been told that the people have been eating the blood, a violation of the dietary laws of Israel. Saul is seemingly appalled by this act and commands that a great stone be brought to the location. Let’s look at what he intends to do with the stone in verse 34 and 35
And Saul said, “Disperse yourselves among the people and say to them, ‘Let every man bring his ox or his sheep and slaughter them here and eat, and do not sin against the Lord by eating with the blood.’ ” So every one of the people brought his ox with him that night and they slaughtered them there. And Saul built an altar to the Lord; it was the first altar that he built to the Lord.
What we see here is that Saul gives the people what they need to properly eat their food.
I was doing a little research on the purpose of the great stone in verse 33 and it was likely used so that the people could properly drain their animals before preparing them to be eaten. He then gives them instructions to do better. And he even builds an alter there.
If we were just to quickly read through this in our daily reading plan, we might think that Saul’s on the right track! I mean look: He fixed the blood issue, he told people not to sin, and he made an alter to the Lord! Those are all three good things right??
Let me warn you, church, legalism and self-indulgent piety looks great on the surface. But as we peel back the layers to get to the heart of everything happening, we see just how insufficient it really is.
Here is the first point of practical application this morning:
Legalism uses rules to cover up bad behavior.
While what Saul said to the people sounds really good, we should note what he did NOT say. The Israelites had just sinned against God by eating the blood of the animals. Did Saul instruct them to repent? Did Saul tell them to confess their sins to the Lord? No! Saul said, don’t worry about that stuff, just don’t do it again! Here, cut your cows like this, the proper way!
Church, we have to understand that God wants contrite hearts, not proper cutting of the cattle! Saul was not wrong to instruct the people to follow God’s commands in the way they ate their food, but it doesn’t matter if you have all the etiquette in the world if you aren’t right with God through repentant faith!
Notice the difference between the Rejected King Saul and what his successor David would say later on down the road:
For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Saul was focussed on self-powered behavior modification rather than humbling the people to see their dependence on God.
What does this mean for us today? It means that we being resolved to do better next time without humbly declaring reliance on the Lord is useless! When you find yourself in sin, you absolutely should do whatever it takes to avoid doing it again, but before even rolling in the great stone, realize the seriousness of your sin, MOURN your sin, be broken and contrite over how you have fallen short of the glory of God. That is what God wants from us! We are to mourn our sin and then praise be to God when when we mourn it because then we are blessed for He has promised to comfort us.
But in our text this morning we are given no indication of mourning, no indication of a contrite heart or broken spirit. Saul is interested in controlling behavior to manipulate the outcome he wants. He is not interested in giving honor and glory to God.
That is really evident in verse 35 where we see that Saul builds an alter. It says this is the first altar that he built. There are two big red flags here. First, where is Samuel? Saul is assuming the role of a priest like he had in giving sacrifices in the earlier chapter. Until this point in 1 Samuel, Samuel had been there whenever an alter was erected. And second, this whole action of building an alter seems to be a vanity project more than a regular rhythm of giving God glory in Saul’s regular life because it says this was the FIRST alter Saul had put up after being in power for some time. According to the ESV commentary set, “it indicates the low priority he accords to the worship of the Lord.” That low priority will be more evident as we press on in the text. Look with me at verse 36.
Then Saul said, “Let us go down after the Philistines by night and plunder them until the morning light; let us not leave a man of them.” And they said, “Do whatever seems good to you.” But the priest said, “Let us draw near to God here.”
After thinking that he had made everything right for the Israelites, Saul wants to jump directly back into battle. It seems like the officers and warriors have had their spirits lifted by the meal and are ready to follow King Saul. It is interesting, though, that the priests direct Saul towards drawing near to God.
They are basically saying, Hey King Saul, it’s great that you want to get back to the action, but like shouldn’t we see what God wants us to do??
This is interesting because once again, if we had just given this a quick read through, we might be tempted to think that Saul was doing what he was supposed to be doing here! He told the people to stop their bad deeds and wants to get back into the good stuff. But we are given another clue here that Saul was ultimately not bothered by honoring the Lord in whatever He did! Just a few Verses earlier, Saul’s son Jonathan says, The LORD has given them into the hand of Israel. Here Saul puts the power in the people, saying let US go down and plunder. No mention of God’s provision.
There are two primary points of application from this section of Scripture.
It is good to have faithful brothers and sisters around us for the times where are hearts are aligned with our own wants or desires and we need to be reminded, hey, let’s take this before the Lord. Let’s draw near to God before taking action. One of the best things you can do as a fellow church member is when someone tells you of all the things they have going on, stop them and say, have you prayed about this? Then whether they answer with a yes or a no, follow that with “can we pray about it together right now?” This is a point of my own personal failure, conviction, and confession. Too often I am caught up in wanting to make plans that I don’t take a moment a to bring it all before the Lord and draw near to Him. We have this mission trip coming up to EKY in the next couple weeks. I’ve recently been talking with the director and theres been some slight changes to the program. My type A mind jumped right to making revisions and plans. I need to step back, pray, and rest in the Lord. I hope that all of you will join in praying for that trip. In fact, let’s pray right now. *PRAY* It is good to be reminded to take our burdens before the Lord who hearts our needs and gives exactly what we need. I hope that this is your reminder this morning and that you would be the reminder in the life of someone around you. The second point of practical application is this:
Busy-ness is not the Christian’s business. Busy-ness is not the Christian’s business. While busy-ness is unavoidable in our lives as we deal with working in a fallen world, those who know the Lord can take solace knowing that our Savior has promised us that as we learn from him that He is gentle and lowly in heart. In Christ Jesus we find rest for our souls. His yoke is easy, His burden is light. This means that as we faithfully and diligently follow the Lord we find that service to Christ the King is a blessing not a burden! This doesn’t mean that we are to sit idle by, no we are learning from Him Jesus says in Matthew 11. That insinuates growth and progress in our lives. We put forth joyous effort, but we do so at the guidance of the Lord. Understanding He is our good Shepherd who leads us in paths of righteousness for His names sake. Following Christ faithfully isn’t about filling up you calendar with non stop mission trips. It is about resting in the Lord and honoring Him in the regular, everyday rhythms of life. Saul here was called out for jumping from battle to battle without taking a breath to hear from the Lord.
So in the next verse we see that Saul does now take a moment to bring his requests to the Lord. Presumably through the priests Saul asks the Lord if he should go after the Philistines. He asks if God is going to lead them in victory. But something happens, or rather doesn’t happen that changes the rest of Saul’s plans. At the end of verse 37 you will read that the Lord did not answer Saul that day.
Now the Lord’s silence in this moment brings up a myriad of things that we could talk about here. First of all we should remember that while God may not immediately reveal to us exactly what it is for us to do next in a situation, through the whole testimony of Scripture, we know that God is always working. We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. All things. Even the times when God SEEMS silent. Our God is working in, through, and above all things. So while God may appear to be Silent in your life in a particular situation, be still and know that He is God. He is your rock and refuge and be confident that He has you securely in the palm of His hand even if from your human perspective you don’t Him working.
Another quick application for the modern believer is that by the grace of God, He is never silent towards us. We have the full testimony of God’s Word. He speaks to us through His Word. Continue in diligent reflection upon the Word of God and take heart He speaks to YOU!
The primary point I want to note before we continue the rest of the text is that God’s silence towards Saul should be seen as an act of God’s judgment towards Saul. Saul was told that he would be replaced as king not too far before this moment. We’ve seen his self-centered, false-piety and self-promoting legalism throughout the last two weeks of study. In the book of James we read Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. No where in this recent text has Saul been drawing near to God. He has been serving himself. It is a massive display of pride for him to think God would respond. Let’s look at how Saul Processes God’s seeming silence.
And Saul said, “Come here, all you leaders of the people, and know and see how this sin has arisen today. For as the Lord lives who saves Israel, though it be in Jonathan my son, he shall surely die.” But there was not a man among all the people who answered him.
So Saul sees rightly that God’s silence is in response to sin. However, he wrongly tries to pin it on everyone else. Over the next few verses Saul goes through a big set of customs and pageantry to figure out who is to blame for God’s silence. His first instinct is to put the blame on other people.
Church what a shame it is that if I am being honest with you this morning, I so often identify more with Saul in this moment than with the instruction we see in the New Testament. I am so quick to find the fault in others and cast blame before owning my own mistakes and humbly bringing that to the Lord. Far too often when things go awry in lives we want to find out who did it to us without realizing we did it to our selves. This isn’t to say that people never wrong us. But we are just real quick to point out the speck in someone else’s eye before removing the log in our own.
Can we start today by owning our failures and humbly laying them at the feet of Jesus? Can we start today caring more about our personal holiness and sin than that of the brother or sister in the pews around us? Can we start today praying, calling out to God with tears in our eyes saying Lord I have sinned against you, I am utterly dependent on your grace, mold me and make me after they will, break my heart and shape it into something that honors you. Your kingdom come, your will be done. Start in MY life.
But that was not the disposition that Saul had. He wanted to figure out who messed up because it couldn’t have been him. So here and for the next few verses he searches for the perpetrator. This is also where we really see the disconnect and difference between father and son. There is a growing division that festers from Saul’s allegiance to himself and Jonathan’s allegiance to the Lord. As a quick point of Father’s Day application, Father’s the best thing you could do in the life of your children is share mutual love and dedication to the Lord. Show your children the joy of serving the Lord rather than serving yourself. And encourage your children to serve the Lord more than themselves.
In our text, that is clearly not Saul’s desire.
Saul, so committed to his personal vindication vows that who ever is the perpetrator of the sin will be put to death. He first makes it s 50/50 choice between Saul and Jonathan on one side and the rest of Israel on the other. They cast lots and it comes up Saul and Jonathan. He then repeats the process and it lands on Jonathan.
It is interesting to note that in this case, it is painfully clear that even though Jonathan is identified as the problem, the fault really lies in Saul. That gives more impetus to when we talked about lots a while ago and I said we should not be deciding our lives’ decisions by the roll of a dice but rather the Word of God. Do not get me wrong here, God is still in control of this situation. Even the lots that seemingly pick Jonathan. But God is using this situation not to accuse Jonathan, but to judge Saul.
So after the lots land on Jonathan, Saul asks him what he has done. Jonathan mentions he ate the honey and almost sarcastically says, “so here I am; I will die.” He is showing his father the ridiculousness of Saul’s vow and response.
R Kent Hughes Notes: “We were not mistaken to see a growing rift between father and son! We are witnessing the deterioration of Saul. The man who did not obey God in chapter 13 and then expressed no confidence in God when faced with his enemies and then devised the crazy plan to save himself by starving his troops and then sounded so very concerned about the people’s act of dis-obedience was now prepared to kill his courageous and godly son because of his (Saul’s) silly oath! In one of his few references to God in this chapter, he swore another oath!”
Saul’s self reliant legalism on full display almost led to the death of Jonathan. But the people of Israel Step in:
Then the people said to Saul, “Shall Jonathan die, who has worked this great salvation in Israel? Far from it! As the Lord lives, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground, for he has worked with God this day.” So the people ransomed Jonathan, so that he did not die. Then Saul went up from pursuing the Philistines, and the Philistines went to their own place.
Bewildered by the overwhelming chastisement from the people, Saul does not kill his son, he picks up his ball and goes home. He stops pursuing the Philistines. The momentum of the battle is gone. As Jonathan said earlier in the chapter, the victory was not as great as it could’ve been. The story ends on a melancholy note.
We wont read it now, but the rest of the chapter goes through what would be Saul’s legacy.
If we were to look at 1 Samuel 14 as a complete unit we’d see the great power of the Lord to secure Israel’s battles. But we’d also see a stark and intentional contrast between Saul and Jonathan. A father son duo that was not on the same page at all. The story of Saul is really a tragic story. Unfortunately we see ourselves identifying with his fallen ways all too often. Saul tried to power his own way without reliance on the Lord. We too try to power our own ways without reliance on the Lord. Those moments, just like Saul’s life, are tragic. We can never make it by our own power.
Now the Father/Son relationship between Saul and Jonathan was certainly tragic. But there is a Father/Son relationship in Scripture that is both a beautiful picture and model for own relationships and also life giving for all those who understand it. That is the relationship between God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ.
At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Instead of fighting with one another, God the Father and God the Son work together in one accord to orchestrate the greatest victory of all time. The victory that provides salvation to all who believe in the name of Jesus. A victory that gives us rest and allows us to release our grasp from the reign of legalism and live in joyous freedom. Our triune God saves!
Three Circles Graphic
Three Circles Graphic