Teacher's Meeting Worship - Saul

I don’t know if any of you have ever given thought to how creepy it would be to ever run into a prophet. Just think about it for a second because if you ran into someone who talked to you about what you did last night and you know for a fact that they weren’t there and there is no way they should have known this that would be pretty creepy. The only reason it wouldn’t be is because of the fact that the message would have come from God.

I want to talk about someone this morning who had such a meeting with a prophet, and his name was Saul. We are introduced to Saul as a man who is looking for his father’s donkey who are now missing. Saul is described as being the most handsome man among the children of Israel and that he was taller than everyone else so that everyone else only stood up to his shoulders. Saul is apparently such a good son that he spends so long looking for these donkeys that his father no longer cares about the missing donkeys but is now concerned about his missing son. Saul is so determined to find these donkeys that he and his servant decide to good and speak to the prophet Samuel about the missing donkeys to try and get some answers. When he reaches Samuel the prophet says without being informed of the situation that the donkeys which he has spend days looking for have been found and then he says something a little cryptic and strange to Saul’s ears. He says “And on whom is all the desire of Israel? Is it not on you and on all your father’s house?”

Samuel then treats Saul to dinner and places Saul in the most honored place and gives him the best choice of the food, and informs him that Saul will be spending the night because they need to talk tomorrow.

The next morning Samuel takes a flask and anoints Saul as the first King of Israel. Now let me put this story in a modern context. For example, if tomorrow when I go to church someone comes up to me and tells me how great a job I’m doing on my financial statements that I prepared this week and how great our audit is going to go in a couple of weeks and then tells me that the LORD has appointed me to be the next President of the United States, do you know what my response is going to be? I’m going to leave that conversation quickly and then pray to God saying, “LORD if that was true, why would you do this to me? I thought you loved me?” Were not told what Saul’s exact reaction to this news was, but the prophet is not done he give Saul some more signs that are going to take place that day to verify that this message has come from God. The last of these signs were that he will meet a group of prophets and that the Spirit of the LORD will come upon him, and he will prophesy and that he will be turned into another man.

Ellen White has this to say about what that meant: As Saul united with the prophets in their worship, a great change was wrought in him by the Holy Spirit. The light of divine purity and holiness shone in upon the darkness of the natural heart. He saw himself as he was before God. He saw the beauty of holiness. He was now called to begin the warfare against sin and Satan, and he was made to feel that in this conflict his strength must come wholly from God. The plan of salvation, which had before seemed dim and uncertain, was opened to his understanding. The Lord endowed him with courage and wisdom for his high station. He revealed to him the Source of strength and grace, and enlightened his understanding as to the divine claims and his own duty. I’m going to be honest that is a change that I feel needs to happen in my life every day. And it is good news that God is willing to do that for each and every one of us, and turn us into another and better person.

Saul goes on his way and keeps quiet about the whole king business because who is going to believe him anyway. Samuel then calls all the people together to have it revealed just who is going to be the first king publically. Then process goes through until it was revealed that Saul was to be the next king, but when everyone looked for him he wasn’t there. How could a man that tall hide among the people? The had to ask God where his king was and he was among the baggage. The first king of Israel was so unready to be presented publically that he hid himself among the baggage. You know we spend so much time focusing on the post-David part of Saul’s life because of how bad it got, that we sometimes forgot to remember just how it all started and how good it really was.

Saul is now in a very difficult position. There is no precedent, organization, or structure for how a king must operate in Israel. This would all have to be created from scratch and all the while enemies are all around them. This is enormous task that will be very hard and Saul wisely decides to not try and do any of it right now. Saul had internal problems to worry about. He was from Benjamin the smallest of the tribes and that fact was taken as a slap in the face to the two largest tribes of Israel Judah and Ephraim who felt that because of their size the king should have come from them. They refused to acknowledge Saul as king. So what does Saul do in this case? He decides that he is going to wait patiently for the LORD’s timing, trusting that God will put him on the throne when the time is right. So he goes home.

After this a city of Israel named Jabesh Gilead is under attack from the Ammonites and a desperate cry goes out for help, and when that cry reaches Saul he acts immediately. He calls for reinforcement from Israel and marches to war, and three hundred and thirty thousand join him. He rescues the city and is now proclaimed as the King of Israel and everyone is willing to acknowledge it. Great things happened because Saul was willing to wait on the LORD to act in his time.

However, we see a contrast to this in the next story we see in Saul. Israel is under attack by the Philistines, and Samuel has told Saul to hold on for seven days because in seven days he will be there to offer a sacrifice. This time it is different. Saul has been king for a couple of years now and now he has to wait for the Lord in this crisis. There is a great lesson here for us to take care about how we present ourselves in times of crisis. You see during these seven days Saul is panicking, he is nervous, anxious and constantly on edge. This trinkled down to the soldiers who were looking to their king for leadership in time of need. He should have taken this opportunity to encourage them by telling them of how God had worked for his people in the past and how he would do so again. Instead of directing their eyes toward God the people were looking to their king and he was struggling. And you know what even though he is struggling and not doing things perfectly he is still holding on, he hasn’t given up. He waits until the appointed time seven days later when Samuel was supposed to arrive and he isn’t there. This is Saul’s moment of testing, this is the moment where he must show that he will trust and depend on God and wait on Him to act, or whether he will rely on his own efforts. This is his Garden of Eden moment. He waits as long as he can, but as he see’s his soldiers leave and his numbers start to dwindle. He gives up and can’t wait any longer and offers the sacrifice. Immediately after the sacrifice is over Samuel arrives.

Now I didn’t know so I was curious how long would it have taken Saul to offer the sacrifice. The answer is unsurprisingly it depends on whether he had help but most likely it could have taken anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour. The tragedy of this is that if Saul had been to wait another 15 minutes he probably could have seen Samuel walking to him and the rest of his life could have gone completely differently. As I’m sure most of you know it only went downhill from here.

What I want to leave you with is this thought. You are going to have a moment of crisis this year. If may come from a student, it may come from a parent, if may come from a co-worker, it may come from somewhere completely unrelated to work, but it will come. And I want to encourage you to hold onto God during that moment of crisis. Take advantage of today to deepen that relationship with God so that it can withstand the storm that Satan will through at you. If Saul had been able to hold one for several more minutes he would seen God work a miracle to save the day. Do give up