Navigating Leadership: The Perils of Saul's Oath

Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church Podcast, where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.

My name is Pastor Josh, and I want to thank you for listening to this podcast.

I hope that this podcast can be a blessing to you and strengthen you in the word of God.

Now, come along, let's look into the Bible and see what God has for us here today.

Let's continue our study here in First Samuel.

And so if you're following along with us, we're in 1st Samuel, chapter 14, and we're gonna start where we left off last week.

And that's verse number 23.

If you weren't here last week.

We studied the bravery and the faith of Jonathan.

Jonathan's the son of King Saul.

And King Saul is waiting back, not acting in what the Lord would call him to do by taking out the Philistines, Jonathan and his armor bearer go out in faith and they begin this conquest against the Philistines.

And we see that God here gives the power to the Israelite army to continue to push the Philistine army away.

And we see in verse 23, a recap of every that everything there.

And it says, so the Lord saved Israel that day, and the battle passed over unto Beth Haven.

And so we see the initiation of the victory that God had promised to the people of Israel.

We see that Jonathan acted in faith.

And we see now Saul trying to jump on and take credit for it.

And we see Stahl making decision after decision that continuously leads him away from the will and the plan of God.

And I wanted us to go to a New Testament passage to kind of get our minds adjusted to what we're going to be talking about here this evening.

And the passage of Scripture in the New Testament is found in James, chapter one.

So keep your finger there in First Samuel, chapter 14, and go with me to James chapter one.

And we're going to look at a verse here that probably most of you have heard in your life and, I hope, desire to follow, but oftentimes we don't.

Within our flesh, within our own way of doing things.

And we see that Saul in this passage in First Samuel does not practice what we're about to talk about in James chapter one.

But James chapter one, verse 19 says, Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.

Now we know that Saul was a man of wrath.

And certainly there is a point in time at which we should act out in righteous indignation against sin.

But what we're going to see in this passage in 1st Samuel, chapter 14 is that Saul's wrath is not out of the love for God and the love for truth and making things right that way.

Saul's wrath is based in his sinful pride and his ego.

And, and we see that he's going to act out and make an oath, and it's an oath that he should not make, and he gets himself in a lot of trouble.

And what we're going to see here is that I think that there's a lesson to be learned in many ways, that when we are in a place where we're following the Spirit, we're able to rest, we're able to have peace, we're able to have comfort, we're able to speak wisely, and we're able to sometimes hold our tongues.

But what we see here in James, chapter one, and also what we're going to see in S. First Samuel, chapter 14, is that when we're acting in the flesh, oftentimes we say things that we don't understand the complete outcome of and can get ourselves into a lot of trouble.

I know there's been times in my life when I'm acting in the flesh and I say something, and as those words are leaving my lips, I want to take them back.

I I know that they're going to be cutting.

I know that there's probably going to be something later on that's going to cause me to regret that.

And so what we're going to see here in this passage in 1st Samuel, chapter 14 is that Saul is going to make a couple of oaths that he shouldn't make.

He doesn't have the authority to make, and he doesn't have the wisdom to make, but he makes it.

And ultimately what he does, he puts him.

He puts a son in jeopardy, Jonathan, the one who's acting in faith.

And so we go to James, chapter one, verse 20, and it says, for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

So we see something in the Bible called the wrath of God.

And the wrath of God is something that's righteous.

The wrath of God is always based in holiness.

And when God enacts his wrath upon individuals and groups of people, he does it in a way that aligns with his character of complete holiness.

So it says there not the wrath of God, but verse number 20 in James chapter one, for the wrath of man.

So the wrath of man is not based in holiness.

The wrath of man is based in selfishness and fleshly desires.

And it says the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

So when we're acting in our own wrath, when we're acting in our own flesh, getting vengeance for ourselves, the Bible says that doesn't work.

Righteousness.

It talks more about how later on in this passage in James chapter one, that we.

We can fall into the trap of being hearers of the Word, but not doers.

And certainly Saul heard the truth from Samuel, and Saul heard the truth from other people, including his son in this passage.

But Saul was someone who heard the word of God, but did not practice the Word and practice his own Word.

And that's what we're going to be studying here in 1st Samuel, chapter 14.

So keep James, chapter 1, verse 19 and 20 in mind when we come to this passage here in First Samuel, chapter 14.

So First Samuel, chapter 14, verse 23, reminds us that the victory was not Jonathan's victory.

It certainly wasn't Saul's victory.

It was the salvation of the Lord.

And that's really what we're reminded with.

In every victory in our life, any victory, any gift, any salvation, anything that's positive in our life comes from God.

No matter what part we have in that process, no matter if God uses an individual or a group of people, it's still the salvation of the Lord.

And so we get the first Samuel, chapter 14, verse 24, and it says, and the men of Israel were distressed that day.

And there's many reasons why they would be distressed.

One would be that they had been fighting for a very long time.

They're exhausted, number one.

But then, number two, they're being led by a man named Saul who is erratic.

They're being led by a man named Saul who's making decisions not based out of the will of God, but based out of the will of himself.

And anytime we have someone who is leading that's erratic and filled with anxiety and filled with all these types of doubt.

And what we're going to see later on in this passage, insecurity that's going to pass along to the people that he's around.

So he's causing this distress with the people that he's leading.

And it says, for Saul had abjured the people.

And so what we really see here is that, that Saul is going to be placing a people under an oath, basically forcing the people to do this, because he makes this oath.

And he says, cursed be the man that eateth any food until evening.

So basically what he does is he enacts not an involuntary fast, but.

But he.

He.

He enacts, or, excuse me, not A voluntary fast.

But he enacts basically a mandatory fast upon them.

And he says, curse be the man that eateth any food until the evening.

And so at first, this kind of might seem to be something that he's doing in a spiritual way, like, hey, we're gonna fast, guys.

But instead of him saying, hey, I'm fasting, you're fasting.

And we're doing this because of the Lord.

We're doing this to call upon the wisdom of God, call upon the word work of God.

And by the way, I do believe that even when we look at the New Testament, anytime we see fasting, we see fasting marked with prayer.

Fasting and prayer go hand in hand.

And fasting is for a purpose, and fasting is for hearing from God and relying on God.

But what Saul says here is, he says, cursed be the man that eateth any food until evening.

And so it might seem to be spiritual.

It might seem to be something that he wants to do for a spiritual reason.

But then we see at the end of verse 24, really his motivation.

We see his focus.

We see what it's all about.

He says, we're not going to eat, that I may be avenged of mine enemies.

And so we see at the heart of this religious act of fasting and this oath that he makes.

And basically what we would see is this.

This curse that he's going to put upon anyone who eats.

This is all done out of selfish motivations.

And so he puts the army that he's over under this oath, not so that they could hear from God, not so that they could perceive the will of God in their life.

But he does this in such a way so that he could get vengeance upon his enemies.

And he regards this as his battle, his.

His thing, his victory.

And so if it was his thing, he should have just fastened himself and done his own thing.

But instead, he's trying to lump people into his own personal battle that he's facing.

So Saul.

Saul shows that even if it looks like something spiritual from the outside, if the focus is on ourself, it's not about the Lord.

It's about ourselves.

It's about attention.

And we could stop here and we could talk about this within the practical sense within Christianity today is that oftentimes we do things outwardly that look to be religious, that look to be what we would consider to be a spiritual action.

But if we're doing it with the wrong reasons, if we're doing it for selfish motivations, whatever that motivation might be, then what we See, is that it's not honoring God.

It's honoring ourselves.

And it's actually not an act of worship, but it's an act of selfishness.

It's an act of sin.

So what would that look like?

Well, that would look like anything when it comes to the idea that, hey, I'm gonna.

Let's say I'm gonna read my Bible, okay?

That's a very good thing to do.

We should be reading our Bibles.

We should be studying the word of God.

We should be applying it to our lives.

But let's say somebody says this.

Well, I'm going to read my Bible not to glean knowledge from God and apply that to my life and do that because it's God's love letter to me.

I'm going to read my Bible and I'm going to let everybody know that I'm reading my Bible so that people will think that I'm super special, that people will praise me, that maybe someone will even write me up a certificate that says that I'm the best Bible reader at Middletown Baptist Church.

Right.

Do you see the difference there?

That.

That I'm reading the Bible not because of my desire to know God more, but I'm reading the Bible so that people will notice me.

And so it's a spiritual act on the outside, but on the inside, it's a fleshly desire.

And so what we have to do is we have to be very careful on what we're doing outwardly and, And.

And bringing other people into it.

And are we doing it in such a way that honors God?

Is it aligned with the will of God or is it aligned with our own will?

We see that at this point in time, Saul has not sought after the Lord's guidance in any of this.

There.

There was a point in time where he went.

Actually, a little bit earlier on, he was asking God, like, should we go?

Should we go?

Who's doing this?

And eventually he goes.

And we're going to see later on in this passage that Saul calls out to God and God doesn't answer him right away.

And so through this curse that Saul is eventually putting in, through this oath, he's going to actually see that it's going to come back to bite him later.

He doesn't know that in this moment, but it's eventually going to come back because it's going to be done in such a way that Saul doesn't know that it's actually his son that breaks this oath, which is he curses his own son.

Now, I don't think that Saul would have voluntarily cursed his son.

I don't think Saul, in his mind, would go against Jonathan and curse him and say, okay, he's going to be cursed to death just on the front end of things.

But we see that Saul makes a fleshly decision that has a ripple effect that will eventually lead to his son facing possible death within this passage.

And so I think that that's also a lesson for us to understand is that sometimes we'll make a fast, rash decision with what we say or by what we do.

And we might not intentionally do something on the front end, but that decision that we make at the very beginning of the line of our rationale will eventually get to a place where it will impact the people that we love.

It will impact the people who.

That we're trying to impact in our life with the cause of the truth.

And so for me, that might be that, you know, something that I say to my child might not initially be something that's going to mislead them, but maybe because of initial reaction of my fleshly desire that that's going to eventually have a ripple effect and a chain reaction to leading them away from the truth of the word of God.

So think about that as we move forward in this passage.

And so this shows that Saul is promising punishment, and him promising punishment's wrong.

He doesn't have the authority to do this.

Saul doesn't have the guidance from the Lord to do this.

And it shows us that really the way that the people respond to this isn't the way that the Lord would have it to be.

So look at verse number 25.

And all they.

That all they.

The land that came to the wood and there was honey upon the ground.

Now we're going to see here that this is going to be a test for them.

Now.

Now, actually, I skipped one last sentence there at the end of verse 24, which I think we should note.

It says, so none of the people tasted any food.

Meaning they went along with this.

And they went along with it, probably for the reason that many of us might go along with it, is that we would fear the king.

They.

They don't do what's right.

They.

They don't just say, well, you know what?

That's a.

That's a bad thing, Saul.

They're going along with their leader.

And.

And we can't necessarily condemn them for this.

But what we do see is that one person's bad decision can lead to a lot of other bad decisions.

And so what we're going to see is that they're going to go into battle with no nourishment.

They're going to go into battle weak.

They're going to go into battle with.

With no strength.

And we're going to see that it almost gets them to a place where they fall into a trap of the Philistines.

And then what we're also going to see is that it leads them into sin later on in their.

In their battle.

So verse 25.

So they come from this place where Saul gives this oath, and they see that as they come up to verse number 25, it says, and all they that came in the land came into the wood, and there was honey upon the ground.

So they find this honey on the ground and they.

And they find this opportunity here, and they're afraid to take it.

Verse 26.

And when the people were coming to the wood, behold, the honey dropped.

But no man put his hand to his mouth, for the people feared the oath.

And so this was something that God had provided for them.

The army needed to be sustained with this type of nourishment.

And this was an opportunity for them to come to a place where they could be strengthened.

They needed the energy to fight, and God provides this for them.

But what we see is that they fear man more than they're actually going to obey God.

And we're going to see Jonathan walk up here and Jonathan's going to make a decision because Jonathan wasn't there for the oath.

Verse 27.

But Jonathan heard not when his father charged the people with the oath.

Wherefore he put forth the end of his rod that was in his hand and dipped it in the honeycomb and put his hand in his mouth, and his eyes were enlightened.

Now, what does this mean?

What does it mean that his eyes were enlightened or his countenance was brightened?

Well, it meant this.

He.

He basically took this, and this sustained him.

This gave him strength.

This gave him alertness as they go into the battle.

And I don't know about you guys, but there's been times in my life where I'm really hungry and I'm weak and I'm thirsty.

And when I'm able to get that sustenance in my body, I'm.

I'm awake, I'm ready to go.

And that's exactly what happens.

And for some of us, that's.

You know, maybe it's in the morning with your morning coffee or tea that gets you up and gets you moving, but either way, we see that this was a great blessing to Jonathan, whether he knew the oath or not.

He comes in, he takes the honey and his.

It says here, his eyes were lightened.

And so though Jonathan does break his father's oath, he doesn't know that he's breaking the oath.

And he does nothing wrong here.

And so ultimately he comes to this place where he takes the honey and he is.

He is strengthened.

Verse 28.

Then answered one of the people and said, thy father straightly charged the people with an oath, saying, cursed be the man that eateth any food this day.

And the people were faint.

So what, what happens here?

Well, basically they.

Whoever is brave enough to tell Jonathan that, hey, you just broke your dad's oath.

Your dad made an oath about whoever eats is going to die.

And so they see the honey dripping, they're all afraid to take it, Jonathan takes it.

And Jonathan's reaction is very interesting.

Here he says verse 29.

Then said Jonathan, my father hath trouble troubled the land.

Jonathan recognizes the flaws in his father.

Jonathan recognizes that Saul shouldn't have made this oath, that Saul has been causing a lot of problems.

Now, some commentators would say that Jonathan shouldn't have disobeyed his father and brought shame to his father's name or, or the king's name.

But nonetheless, whether it's respectful or not, he's speaking the truth.

His father had brought a lot of trouble to the land.

And there.

There was a sense here where he is questioning his father's leadership.

And so one might say that his father's leadership should have been questioned.

And so he says here, my father have troubled the land.

See, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlightened.

Meaning, this would have been a good thing for all of you to take this in.

This would have been a blessing for everyone.

And so it's my father's disobedience and his wrath and his being not slow to speak, but being quick to speak and not thinking about what this would mean.

That essentially it's his vengeance and his pride getting in the way of the blessing that could come to his people.

And he says, see what the little honey has done for me?

It's.

It's strengthened me.

So if my father wouldn't have said this, we all would be strengthened.

Verse 30.

How much more if happily, the people had eaten freely today of the spoil of their enemies, which they found.

For had there not been now a much greater slaughter amongst the Philistines, meaning we got a victory.

But think about how much of a greater victory we could have had if we were able to freely eat of this blessing that God has given us.

And so King Saul troubled the land because of his selfish decision.

And really what it does is it limits the blessing that God could have done through obedient people, through people who were ultimately willing to follow him instead of follow Saul.

And so they were weak and distracted and the victory was still theirs.

But ultimately the victory was not as large as it could have been.

That Jonathan notes that the, the victory could have been much larger if my dad didn't make this oath.

So what we're going to see now is that because of them missing out on this blessing from the Lord, the people of the army are going to be so hungry that they get to a place in their life where they don't care about any rules and they're just going to eat.

And what it does is it actually leads the people to a place of sin.

And so I was reading through this passage and I'm, I'm thinking, what, what does this mean?

Why would this lead to such a way where they would sin?

And I think about the idea of legalism, right?

Legalism is the idea of putting man made principles upon the principles of God, meaning exercising the things of God in a man made way.

So for example, legalism would be, yes, the Bible says that we should do a certain thing within our worship service, but we're going to do it in a way that we feel is best and that we're better than other people because of this is how we do it.

And so what we see is that legalism is always adding something fleshly upon something that God has ordained to be good and true.

So the Pharisees would take the law, right?

So we have the New Testament legalism.

The Pharisees would take the law, which was a good thing from the Lord and then they would impose other things on top of that law and do very man made fleshly things upon the law and actually twist the law and use the law for their good and use the law for their own fleshly benefits.

And so really we see legalism is always about the flesh.

Legalism is always about doing things with man's focus.

And so what we see happening here is that remember he does this idea of like, hey, let's fast good thing, but let's do it in a way that's selfish.

Let's do it in a way that has those prideful motivations.

And so essentially what we see is that this legalism leads to people rebelling and going into sin.

What that shows is this legalism or a list of rules or man made impositions upon a group of people are never going to get people to a place of living righteously and holy.

It's always a hard change.

It's always a love relationship with God.

It's always adhering to the obedience that God has called us to do, not out of forcefulness and man's focus, but out of a love and a stirring of our hearts.

And so what we're going to see in this passage of Scripture is that because of Saul's legalism that he's imposing upon the people that they do get to a place where they completely rebel and they completely turn away and they fall into the trap of sin, which we're going to see that they disobey God by eating food that God told them not to eat.

At least not in a way that God told them not to eat it in.

So basically, let's read this and then we'll explain it.

Verse 31.

And they smoked the Philistines that day from Mikmash to Asiaon.

And the people were very faint.

So verse 31 tells us that they did have the victory.

The victory was already promised by God.

So Jonathan and the people of Israel move forward in that.

But remember, Jonathan said it could have been a greater victory.

And it says that they were very faint.

At the end of verse 31, we see that they are basically at the point of passing out.

They're basically at a point where they're going to lose themselves because they are so malnourished.

Verse 32.

And the people flew upon the spoil.

So they find the spoil there in the land of the Philistines.

And it says they took the sheep and oxen and calves and slew them on the ground, which again, would not be something that they should do.

They should have done it upon an altar and the people did eat them with the blood.

Now, some of you I know might like your steaks medium rare.

This is little different than that.

What would happen.

Most of you know that in the, in the customs of, of the book of Leviticus and the dietary laws of the Jewish people, they would need to drain the animals of their blood before they could eat them.

That's what we would call today kosher eating.

But that would be something that they had to do that was part of God's plan for them.

And there were many reasons why God had the dietary laws in the Old Testament.

And there's many reasons later on when we see in the New Testament that God frees us from those dietary laws.

It doesn't mean that someone's wrong if they want to follow those dietary laws, as long as they don't think that's going to save them.

But at that point in time, it was God's plan for the people to follow those dietary restrictions.

And so for them to not drain the animals of the blood would have been a sin because they were breaking the.

The law of God.

They were breaking the plan that God had for them.

And so God specifically commanded the people of Israel that they should always properly drain the blood from the animal as they prepared it for eating.

That's Deuteronomy chapter 12 and other places in the Old Testament law that.

That they were taught about this.

And so on this day of battle, because of originally Saul's foolish decisions and his foolish oath that he made and that fleshly oath that he made, the people were so, so hungry.

They had been basically tempted to this.

Saul had got them to a place where they couldn't eat at all, that they were so hungry that they were willing to eat the first thing they saw.

And that desire brought them to a place where they broke the command of God.

And so the way that you could see it is that their obedience to Saul and Saul's foolish decisions, his selfish decisions, led them to disobey God where God had clearly told them not to disobey him, obviously.

And that's the number one person that we have to obey.

And so what we see is that's always going to be the result of legalism.

If we have a group of people following a person and a person's ways, what that ends up being is that if they're following a person, what's going to happen?

Well, if someone's following a person and the way that the person says that they should live, eventually that person's going to be wrong.

So let's say, for example, everyone in Middletown Baptist Church needs to follow Pastor Josh's preferences.

My.

My opinions, everything that I say to be good, you have to do everything that I say.

The problem with that is that if you try to follow that 100%, I'm eventually not going to be 100% right about everything in the Bible.

Therefore, if your eyes are on man, they will be off of God.

So what we teach in the church is keep your eyes on the Lord.

Now, I teach you as a pastor and other spiritual leaders teach you to follow God, but not to follow man.

Paul says, follow me as I follow the Lord.

Don't follow me alone.

I'm not the arbiter of the word of God.

Therefore, what we see Here is that the people's eyes were on Saul and their eyes were so far unsull that they took their eyes off of what God had called them to do.

And they were so hungry that they just acted in their flesh.

And so fleshly actions lead to fleshly actions, no matter if those fleshly actions are directly, immediately opposed to God or fleshly reactions of just trying to do church on our own in our flesh.

You know, there's a lot of churches in America that many of you maybe have even seen there or, or maybe you've even been a part of, to some degree that have tried to do everything in the church through the strength of man or through the strength of a preacher or through the strength of a movement.

And what we have to do is we have to be very careful of those things because there, it's a very fine line.

It's a very fine line between following a godly leader and following a leader that's focused on themselves.

And that's what we see here in 1st Samuel chapter 14 is that Saul is not a man who is leading them according to the word of God.

He's a man that's leading them to according to his own word.

So what happens is that they sin.

So verse 32, and the people flew upon the spoil.

They took it without following what this is all cult told them to do in the book of Deuteronomy.

And so we think that oftentimes we think that legalism or rules that we impose upon people will keep people from sin.

And rules are good to some degree, but rules will never keep someone away from sin.

It will only break parameters.

It will only give parameters that they're going to break.

So what we do.

So for example, if I just tell the church, here's all the rules that you have to follow, and here's all the rules that you have to do to be a good Christian.

Eventually what's going to happen is that we're going to focus on ourselves and focus on how much we can follow the law.

And the Bible says in Ephesians 2, 8, 9, it's for by grace you say through faith and that not of yourselves.

It is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.

So rules in and of themselves aren't a bad thing.

But if rules are the basis to everything that we do, we're missing the point.

Because what we actually see is that when we put out rules, rules, you've heard it say, stated before, someone might have even said this to you.

Well, rules are made to be broken.

And that's actually what eventually happens.

If we just have rules, if we have a religion of rules, the rules will eventually be broken and will basically be at square one.

So legalistic rules lead us to sin, whether they provoke us to a place of rebellion against God or they lead it lead us to pride.

Because that's exactly what happens.

Because when someone can follow the rules better than somebody else, think about this.

Let's think about, like, okay, Middletown Baptist is 100 rules that you must follow.

Okay?

Nobody could follow the rules completely 100 of the time.

But what would happen is, is that there would be people that could follow the rules maybe up to a certain point.

Like, maybe you're like, oh, I can follow 50 of those rules pretty good.

And there's another person in the church that says, why follow 75 of those rules?

And then someone else walks in and says, why?

I follow 94 of those rules.

But what happens in our human nature is that the 94 percenter looks to the 50 percenter and says, I'm a better Christian than that person because I could follow more rules.

And really, that goes back to pride.

So whether legalism leads us to a place of rebellion or leads us to a place of pride, it leads us to two places that are not in the righteousness of God.

Therefore, what we see is that Saul can't just make all these rules and keep them under control.

He should have been turning them to the Lord, right?

We know that even David was a man after God's own heart.

It's all about the heart of God.

So what we see here, verse number 33, then they told Saul, saying, behold, the people sin against the Lord.

So they're not sinning against Saul.

They're sinning against the Lord in that they eat with the blood.

And he said, yay, you have transgressed.

So Saul calls out their sin.

And, you know, it's interesting here.

Saul does say the right things.

And so actually, in this particular portion of scripture, for a little bit of time, Saul does the right thing.

He tries to fix the problem.

And so he says here, they have transgressed.

He.

He admits their sin.

And I think that that's good.

And I don't think that his heart is completely changed here, but we at least see that he recognizes sin.

And so he says, ye have transgressed.

Roll a stone unto me this day.

Now, the problem with this, and I think that maybe some of you can even see the problem that we're getting to here, is that Saul doesn't say we have sinned.

Right?

He takes no responsibility for this sense of leadership.

He says, you guys have sinned.

And I think that if this was a situation where Saul could recognize his sin, I think this would be a great place of repentance for him to say, man, you know what?

Yes, you've sinned, but I've been a part of that because I've led you guys astray.

But yet nonetheless, he says, you have sinned.

And he says, roll a great stone unto me this day.

Now, if you don't know the context of what he's talking about here, you might say, well, what's he act.

What's he asking for a stone to be rolled over there?

What he's asking for is he's asking for an altar stone to be rolled there so that they can properly deal with the animals like the Lord had called them to do so.

Verse 34.

And Saul said, disperse yourselves among the people and say unto them, bring me hither.

Every man is ox and every man is sheep, and slay them here and eat, and sin not against the Lord in eating with the blood.

So again, we do see that Saul makes the right decision here.

He sets up the stone, he tells them that they need to properly take care of the animals, and he builds an altar to the Lord.

And so Saul did something right here, even though he was wrong before.

And.

And we're going to see that sometimes in life, Saul is going to make a decision that is somewhat aligned with what the word of God says.

But nonetheless, we see that he does turn back and forth.

And so he's just a man that of erratic nature.

So we see here at ver.

Verse 35.

He.

He says, and Saul built an altar unto the Lord, and the same was the first altar that he built under the Lord.

So it was the first time he had ever done this.

And he builds an altar to the Lord.

Verse 36.

And Saul said, let us go down after the Philistines by night.

And so Saul has a plan.

And.

And he says, let's do this.

Let's go down to the Philistines by night and spoil them until the morning light, and let us not leave a man of them.

And they said, do whatsoever seeth good unto thee.

Then said the priest, let us draw near hither unto God.

So this is interesting.

Saul is going to make a decision.

Saul says, okay, we need to go down and make this a final defeat of the Philistines.

We need to go down and take care of them.

And he's reminded by the priest here he says, let us draw near hither to God.

This is something that Saul should have done a long time ago.

Saul should have drawn near to God lot, lot earlier.

And Saul asked counsel of God.

Now that's good.

But we almost see that asking counsel for God is an afterthought.

Now, it's never too late to ask the counsel for the Lord.

But what I will say is that many times we need to learn our lessons earlier than later.

Because if Saul would have learned this lesson earlier in his life, he would have spared himself from a lot of struggles and difficulties and pain.

And I think that's a lesson that I need to learn.

It's a lesson that we all need to learn to take the counsel of God earlier on in our trials.

I know for me, my, my situation that I'll usually face myself, get myself in, is that I will get to a trial.

I'll go through the trial, I'll get myself into a real pickle, and I'll be over my head, and then that's when I go to the Lord.

And of course, the Lord pulls us out.

But oftentimes we need to be the ones that are going before the trial, always with the Lord seeking after him, preemptively preparing ourselves for the trials at life.

Now, I know that we cannot prepare for every trial that we face.

We.

We know that we can never guess what the next trial is going to be, but at least we can know that we will be going through trials.

Therefore, prepare ourselves in our heart and seek the counsel of the Lord.

So Saul asks God, shall I go down after the Philistines?

So we, we saw then, verse 36.

He already made up his decision.

He says, let's go down and take the Philistines now.

Oh, we better seek after God.

God, should we go down there?

This is kind of like me.

Sometimes I want to make a decision and then ask God, just Lord, bless it, is this right?

But nonetheless, he does this.

And Saul asked counsel of God, shall I go down after the Philistines?

Wilt thou deliver them into the hand of Israel?

So he says, lord, is this the right decision?

Is this something that we should do?

Will thou deliver them into the hand of Israel?

But he answered him not that day.

So this is interesting.

This is good.

Saul is asking God for counsel.

Saul should have asked the counsel of God much earlier.

But Saul questions the Lord.

He says, he doesn't question him.

He asks a question to the Lord.

Saul asked a question to God and says, lord, through the priest, is this the right thing to do?

And most likely what would have happened is that they, the priests would have been doing something called seeking the Lord through the urim and the thumim, which we don't need to go into that too much here this evening.

A lot of different people have a lot of questions on what the urim and thuring were.

Basically what most scholars believe it was was this pouch in front of the priest's chest.

And there were two stones in there, a dark stone and a light stone.

And basically he would reach down in there and pull out a stone and it would be like a yes or no answer, like lord, should we go?

And reaching down it would be yes or no.

And the priest would communicate with God.

And they would have been considered the discerning tools of the priest found in the book of Exodus, Book of Numbers.

You see it throughout the Old Testament.

And basically their use may be implied the fact that they're asking God for certain clarity and certain understanding.

Now we know that that's not what we do today.

We don't reach into a pocket and pull out a coin and say, that must be from God.

We speak to God through prayer.

That's the difference within the Old Testament and the New Testament, though it's always by faith.

There was kind of a dividing line in the Old Testament when it came to communicating with God.

It was the priests that would communicate with God.

And even, even Saul needed to go through the priest.

Now we know, amazingly, that when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, the Bible says that the, the, the veil in the holy of holies was torn in two.

Therefore we don't have to have the high priest to go before us.

Well, we do, but the high priest is Jesus Christ, who opens the door for us.

The Bible says that in Hebrews.

And the Bible tells us that because of Jesus Christ, because of what he has done for us, because he's our great high priest, we now have access to the Father.

We can go in there confidently, boldly, before the throne of grace.

So the way that looks like for us today is we don't have to go to a priest and say, hey, can you use these special stones who give me some kind of clarity from God?

We can go straight to God and he will answer us.

Maybe he'll make us wait, maybe he'll give us a yes, maybe he'll give us a no.

But God answers us through prayer.

That's the way that we communicate with him.

That's the way we discern the will of God.

Now I, I would say this within our Life.

If we're making a big decision like Saul is doing here, we should look at it from a couple of different angles.

Number one, we should plead with the Lord to give us clarity and understanding through prayer.

Okay, so number one, ask God for His will.

Ask God for discernment, ask God for wisdom.

The Bible even says in the Book of James, if we lack wisdom, if we lack discernment, ask God, and He'll give it to us if we ask in faith.

So the first step of discerning the will of God in our life is by prayer, asking God for clarity, asking God for direction.

But secondly, it's listening to God.

Now, again, we don't get the answer from God through possibly a stone or, or as they are going to do in this chapter, casting lots.

We don't do that.

We shouldn't do that to discern the will of God and the Word of God.

So how do we hear from God?

Well, predominantly what we see in the New Testament is that the way we hear from God is through His Word.

So that's the way we communicate with God.

We communicate with God by the way that we talk to him is through prayer.

The way that we receive the word of God, the way we hear what he wants for us is by going to His Word.

And the Bible even says In Romans, chapter 10, verse 17, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

And so we can't ever expect to hear from God if we don't have, number one, a relationship with Him.

But number two, to be involved with His Word, to.

To going to His Word, to studying His Word by listening to preaching, by listening to things that are enlightening when it comes to the Word of God, whether it be through a Bible study or through a discussion.

And so what we see is that, yes, God does speak through circumstances.

God does speak through, I believe, the guidance of the Holy Spirit and peace and open doors and closed doors.

But every open door, every closed door, every.

Every feeling or guidance that we have through the Holy Spirit by perceiving the Holy Spirit's discernment and guidance in our life is always going to be aligned with the Word of God.

God's message to us will never contradict His Word.

No, no feeling or discernment from the Holy Spirit will ever contradict His Word.

God's never going to call us to do something that contradicts what he has called us to do within his scriptures.

And so therefore, we can't be like Saul and say, well, this must be from God.

Therefore, I. I feel something happening.

So I'm just going to act in it and I act in disobedience.

God's word, God's spirit is not going to lead us to a place of disobedience in our life.

It never will.

The Bible says that it's our flesh that leads us to that disobedience.

We saw that from the very beginning here this evening.

So Saul is asking God for counsel, but God doesn't answer him on that day.

Now there's a lot of reasons beyond my comprehension why God makes us wait there.

There are certain times where we're walking with God and God does not give us an immediate answer.

It possibly could be a test of faith.

We see in Scripture that there's times of waiting, there's seasons of waiting.

We see that throughout many of the different individuals that we study in Scripture.

God doesn't always give an immediate answer.

So why would God make us wait?

Well, maybe one, it's because of the fact that he's testing us in our patience.

He's.

He's wanting to see where our heart is.

Secondly, I think that the, one of the reasons why God doesn't respond to us is the Bible says if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.

That doesn't mean that God isn't capable of hearing the individual that's praying.

But the Bible says that if we're harboring bitterness and sin in our life, God doesn't hear us.

He, he, he rejects that because it's like if I want to have a relationship with God, but yet I want to have relationship with my sin.

That's a, the Bible says a double minded man is unstable in all of his ways and he can't expect anything to be answered in his prayer life.

That's what James chapter one says.

The Bible says in James chapter one, ask God and he'll give it to you liberally, but don't expect him to answer you if you're a double minded person, meaning Lord, I'm going to ask you for this, but I'm not asking in faith.

I'm walking in my own rebellion.

I'm acting out in my own fleshly desires.

And so there's many reasons why God might have us wait.

There are many reasons why God will not answer us.

But what we're going to see here is that ultimately Saul is dealing with many different things that we're going to study later on in Psalm or excuse me, first Samuel, chapter 14, particularly with his son, because at this very moment he doesn't know.

Saul doesn't know that he's cursed his son to death.

That's where he's standing right now.

Saul made a hasty oath.

He had made a hasty promise to say, whoever eats is gonna die.

What's his son who did that?

So now Saul is going to have to make a decision on what to do, because he's now basically got his son in a place where his son should, in his mind, be put to death.

And so that's really where this next part of the chapter is going to turn to, is how Saul and Jonathan and the Lord and the people are going to work out what Saul did in his sin.

And so as what we're going to see in this passage is that he seeks after the Lord's wisdom.

He does not answer.

And.

And what we're going to see is that the priest inquires for the Lord for him.

And what we're going to see in verse number 38, and Saul said, draw ye near hither, all the chief people, and know and see wherein this sin hath been this day, meaning this he's ready to see.

He.

What does he do?

God doesn't answer him.

He's going to blame it on the people.

Obviously, someone's sinning around me.

So we're going to figure out who's doing this sinning.

We're going to figure out who's the one that broke this.

This oath.

And what he's going to find out is that later on it's his son.

And he's going to have to come to grips with that.

And so this shows how sure Saul was that.

That he was right.

He's.

Oh, in Saul's mind, he's always right.

Obviously someone else did.

Obviously someone else is guilty.

Obviously someone else is at a place where they shouldn't be.

And he was so sure that he had pronounced.

He.

He pronounces another oath in this next passage.

And so obviously, if Saul would have known that it was Jonathan who was the one who violated his oath, he's not going to do what he's about to do, but he's basically going to make this other oath to basically say, we're going to cast lots and we're going to find out who this person is.

So he makes one wrong decision.

But like I tell my kids and like I try to live my own life, two wrongs don't make it right.

And he's basically going to try to do another wrong to fix his other wrong.

And it's just going to get to a Place where ultimately we see Saul played out in, in chapter 15, which, if you know anything about chapter 15 in First Samuel, it's really the Saul's down, down, down moment.

I mean, it's the place where he rejects the plan of God and doesn't do what God calls him to do.

And there's, there's great problems with that.

And, and Samuel calls him out for that.

And then really we're going to see after that, David come on to the scene.

And it's going to be an interesting study for sure.

So we'll stop there.

We're going to pause our study tonight because we do need to go to our prayer time.

But I hope that we've learned the lesson in James chapter one, that we should be swift to hear, hear the whole story.

Before I make a decision, let me hear the whole thing out.

Slow to wrath, slow to speak.

Meaning let me hear it, let me consider it.

Let me put this before the Lord.

Let me seek God's counsel.

Then I'm going to speak.

Yes.

Then I'm going to act.

And that's going to lead us to a place of.

Though we won't be perfect, we're going to be a lot more aligned with the understanding of following God's plan for our life instead of following our own plan.

And then secondly, just to see the pain of legalism, the, the, the pain of following a person rather than God, because if we follow a person, we will eventually be disappointed.

If we follow a person, we'll eventually be misled, whether we know it or not.

And the idea would be for us is that as a leader, so whatever capacity that I'm leading or you're leading, we must always lead with the understanding that we're not the final authority.

Even though to my children, I'm the final authority, they really need to understand that though I'm their dad and I have authority over them, I'm not the final authority.

So that when they sin against me, they're not just sinning against dad, they're sinning against the Lord and having a conversation with them about that.

You know, the Bible says children will bear your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

And, and I wanted to, you know, as a parent, you always want them to understand, obey your parent.

But then sometimes I forget to emphasize the part that it says in the Lord, meaning really you're obeying God as you're obeying your parents.

And that goes for us, like in every capacity in our life, when we're following the rules or when we're obeying whatever authorities place in our life at whatever capacity, or we're really obeying God by obeying the authority that he has ordained in our life.

And that's a hard pill for us to swallow.

But ultimately, the way that we respond to everything in our life is an indication of whether or not we're submitting ourselves and obey obeying God.

So really, Saul shows like because Saul was that in Israel, Saul was the top.

There was no one above Saul, except the fact that he forgot that sometimes.

He forgot that God was over him.

He he thought he was the peak, the pinnacle of Israel.

And in human eyes he was.

But then he forgot that at the very beginning of his royalty, his his being crowned as king, Samuel reminded him that ultimately he submits to God.

And he forgot about that.

Because of that, he got himself into a lot of problems.

So we'll stop there.

Thank you again for listening to the Middletown Baptist Church Podcast.

I hope that this sermon has been a blessing for you.

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Thank you so much.

God Bless.

Have a wonderful day.