The Rise and Fall of the First King of Israel (3)

The King is Chosen

(Have a student pray)

Hello everyone! How’s school this week? How many of you have homework due tomorrow? Suckas. Just kidding I have a lot of homework to do too I feel y’all.

Welcome everyone! We are so glad you’re here! Those who are new, special welcome to you! This is a time that we do every week where we like to chill out from all the game and social time to sit and dig into the Word of God. This book read isn’t just a rulebook, we believe that it is the actual words of God to us and we want to share that with you.

So, I know the feeling of turning our brains off as soon as we are told to sit down and listen to someone talk for a few minutes. I promise I totally understand that. You can ask my wife I get the desire to pull out my phone and just scroll mindlessly when I am supposed to be paying attention to something. But if you guys would I would ask that we put our phones away unless you’re taking notes or on the Bible app just for a few minutes here. This is not school, we will never take your phone away for being on it, but thats just our hope and suggestions for y’all.

Anyway, speaking of school, how many of you guys have mapped out a school you’ll be going to in the next couple years? (call on people -what school / program)

Awesome! Well I have completed my first to years of college in Wisconsin these last couple years and let me tell you a little story about it. So we all know post-secondary schooling is too expensive correct? Well, I had worked the couple years before going to school at a restaurant in town basically full time. So by the time I was just about headed off to school, I was looking at my bank account like… nice! I’m doing pretty well for myself! I was planning on working too during school so I was so confident in my self and my job, not to mention, I got a 2 Grand cheque from the government because covid reasons. I was going to be totally set.

Fast forward to the end of year one. I spent the summer here and it was not until I was just about to drive back down to school when I got a letter in the mail saying I owe the government 2000 dollars. Woah. This was a shock. So suddenly I felt like I needed to crunch the numbers. And after looking at that… man I was so far off it was crazy.

Now it’s panic time right? I put all my trust in my job that I worked at and the government to provide for my finances for schooling. I get that the government can totally be a useful tool, but I was putting all my trust in it.

After freaking out for a while I decided to go into prayer. I asked God to forgive me for trusting in the world and not in Him, and I prayed that He would provide financially for me in the next season of schooling. Guess what happened after that?

God provided. I definitely did not have enough money, but guess what, somehow, the numbers worked out Rachel and I both came out the other side debt free. The church we went to out there gave us a dump of money when the car broke down and the school was willing to help out too! God just really said -I gotchu man. Don’t stress. I have it all figured out for you.

Okay let us jump back into the story of 1 Samuel. Quick recap,

What did God tell the Israelites they needed to do in relation to the other nations in 1500 BC? - Be set apart. Be different.

How did the Israelites not listen to this instruction, what did they do?

Demanded a king

Great, now who remembers the first character (real person btw) we introduced last week?

Samuel the prophet

Here is a slide of Samuel because we did not have it last week to kind of personalize him in your minds. This isn’t an actual picture but its probably pretty close to what he looked like.

God tells Samuel that if they want a king that bad, they can have a king. Now, Israel is in a stage of looking for someone to lead the nation. Since Samuel is still the mouthpiece for God, he is the one who is going to choose the man, obviously by the instruction of God.

Here we are introduced to the second of the three main characters in this series. Anyone have a guess? Saul. So if you know the apostle Paul from the NT, he was probably named after this guy.

Saul Slide

Saul was a man from the Israelite tribe of Benjamin. Now, there are a few descriptive words that the Bible uses to describe this man. It does not say exactly how old he is, but we guess late twenties to early thirties based on how long he reigned over Israel .

One of the things the bible makes a significant point about, is that the man is a stunner. It literally says in verse two that no one in the land was better looking than he was. It is a shame that we do not have an accurate portrait of Saul cause like, even I kind of want to know what this guy looks like if he was that handsome. (replace joke..?)

The second thing was that he was tall, head and shoulders above everyone else. When you’re picking your starting five basketball team from the bible, Saul has gotta be round one or two pick because of his build for sure. Anyway this guy on paper was the exact kind of guy that Israel wanted. He’s the kind of guy I would want as king if I were an Israelite.

Anyway, Saul was just on an errand for his dad. One of the donkeys got loose so he took a servant with him and they want on a journey to find the donkey. After multiple days of looking for this donkey, they couldn’t find it so actually what the two decided is that they were going to go find the prophet and ask him to tell them where the donkey was. Apparently thats something you would just do in Israel when you needed help with something. So heres what happened, tall dark and handsome Saul ends up finding Samuel and goes to ask him about the donkey. Here is what is happening with Samuel

1 Samuel 9

15 Now the day before Saul came, the LORD had revealed to Samuel: 16 “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and 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 my people, because their cry has come to me.” 17 When Samuel saw Saul, the LORD told him, “Here is the man of whom I spoke to you! He it is who shall restrain my people.”

1 Samuel 9

18 Then Saul approached Samuel in the gate and said, “Tell me where is the house of the seer?” 19 Samuel answered Saul, “I am the seer. Go up before me to the high place, for today you shall eat with me, and in the morning I will let you go and will tell you all that is on your mind. 20 As for your donkeys that were lost three days ago, do not set your mind on them, for they have been found.

Oh… uh okay Samuel, Saul is definitely not expecting what comes next.... If you’re kind of following along with the story this is the start of chapter 10.

The day after, Samuel pulls out this flask of oil and pours it over Saul’s head, anointing him to be the first ever human king of Israel. Woah, its happening.

After this, the Bible says in verse 9 that when Saul turned to leave Samuel, God gave him another heart. There is a little story of how the Holy Spirit fills Saul and it says he prophesies and does some cool things which shows us that He is different, God is actively working inside Him now.

So why is this a strange thing? Anyone have any idea? Why is it crazy that God is working directly in Saul now that he is anointed?

So we discussed last week that there has to be an intercessor, and its only ever been a priest or a prophet up until this point, now its this random dude, and God is going into Saul and doing awesome powerful things.

That same God is in all of us Christians forever right now, after Jesus died and rose from the dead for our sins.

NO ONE ELSE at this point had God in them. You know what this means? It means that Saul is the most OVER POWERED human in the world. Saul had GOD in him. Nothing can stop God! WHAT? thats crazy!

I don’t know if you guys have questions that pop into your head about that last little section, but I am reading this and i’m thinking, God, you could've just chosen a sub-par king and let the Israelites see that a king wasn’t going to save them like you told them.

But that isn’t what he does! In fact, He chooses a king that is exactly the kind of person they wanted, and then fills him with the Holy Spirit so that he really does protect and bless the Israelites.

Why would He do that? Weren’t they disobeying?