The Peril of Impatience: Lessons from Saul's Leadership

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.

So if you have your Bibles, turn with me to 1st Samuel 13.

1St Samuel 13.

We have been studying the life of Saul and watching how God's power that rests upon Saul has certainly impacted the way that he's made decisions.

We saw just a couple chapters ago, Saul being led by the Spirit, the Spirit of God comes upon Saul, and Saul makes the decisions that honor and glorify God in obedience.

But we're also going to see instances in the life of Saul that indicate that he does not follow God.

And that's all about what First Samuel chapter 13 is about.

And in First Samuel chapter 13, Saul has a problem with waiting on the Lord.

And we would talk about a situation here where he is told something through Samuel, through the prophet, and he's told to wait to give a sacrifice.

But yet, because of his anxiety, because of his lack of patience, he moves forward and he moves ahead of God and he thinks that he's doing the right thing in his own strength and his own wisdom.

But yet we see that there's a great problem with what he does.

And ultimately God definitely gives him a place of discipline here in this chapter.

So with that being said, we're in 1st Samuel chapter 13, and I want you to keep your finger there.

And we're going to cross reference this passage with a passage that you're probably very familiar with, and That's Galatians chapter 5.

Galatians chapter 5 in the New Testament tells us a list of the things that we call the fruit of the Spirit.

The fruit of the Spirit.

Fruit of the Spirit are essentially the manifestations of the Holy Spirit leading and guiding our life and our decisions.

And as a Christian, we have a decision on whether or not we want to yield to the Spirit and follow the Spirit in obedience, essentially following God, obeying God, or to follow something else the Bible calls the flesh or the Old Man.

And if we decide to work out the works of the flesh, the Bible talks all about that in Galatians chapter 5.

If you're interested in knowing more about that, you certainly can look at Galatians chapter 5.

And starting in verse 17, it talks about the flesh and how the flesh lusts after Certain things.

And verse 16 tells us that we can make a decision in Galatians 5.

This I say, then walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

So really what we see that even as a believer, we have to make a decision on whether or not we're going to yield to the Spirit and essentially obey God, or are we going to give in to the flesh?

And so we go down to the famous passage in verse 22, where Galatians 5 says, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.

And then we see a word here in the King James, long suffering.

We use the word patience.

But essentially it's a picturesque way to describe someone waiting, having that type of patience in the midst of a life of faith, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

Against such there is no law.

The one I want us to focus on here this evening is that word long suffering or patience.

And really what we see within our lives is that when we're walking in the Spirit, God gives us patience.

And the root of patience is faith.

It's believing that God's going to do what he says he's going to do.

And I can be patient and wait in that.

Now, there's another side of the coin that a lot of people fall into, and we often call that patience.

And it's something called passivity or passiveness.

Oftentimes there's the sin of passiveness.

We should be doing something, but we don't do it.

And then there's times in our life where we shouldn't be doing something, and we do it.

And so really what patience is, is patience is waiting in faith, believing that God is working.

And passivity is basically this, I need to do this, but I'm afraid to do this.

Therefore, it's based in fear.

So patience is based in faith.

Passiveness is based in fear.

And so we see in 1st Samuel, chapter 13, Saul coming to a situation in his life where he can exercise patience or passiveness.

And really, essentially, he doesn't do either one.

Essentially, what he does is he just moves forward and does what he thinks is best.

And oftentimes in our life, what that can look like is that God is making us wait.

Maybe it's in a time of prayer, maybe it's in a time of service.

Maybe it's just something that we want.

And God tells us to wait on that.

Maybe he doesn't say no, but maybe he says it's a time where we need to wait.

And oftentimes, as Christians, we try to get ahead of God.

And then we ask God to just bless our life.

And that's what we see here in 1st Samuel chapter 13.

So without further ado, we're going to get to 1st Samuel 13.

It describes how long Saul has been reigning.

Saul reigned one year.

And when he had reigned two years over Israel.

So we see that there's been some time for Saul to kind of get into his place, kind of get comfortable with what he's doing.

And ultimately we know that there are a lot of people that are coming against Saul and the people of Israel, one being the Philistines.

You're probably very familiar with the Philistines.

And so that's what is going to happen here.

There's going to be this conflict with the Philistines.

And oftentimes in Scripture when we look at these pagan people that are coming against the people of Israel, their pictures or symbols or likenesses of the situations that we might face in our life.

And so we see here that Saul has been reigning for some time now.

And it says in verse 2, Saul chose him three thousand men of Israel, where of two thousand were with Saul in Mikmash and the in Mount Bethel, and a thousand were with Jonathan, that's his son.

This is the first mention of Jonathan, his son Jonathan, and Gibeah of Benjamin and the rest of the people.

He sent every man to his tent.

So what we're actually seeing here in verse two is the form formulation of the Israeli army, the, the Israelite army, the Jewish army that Saul is putting together here.

And before this, they really didn't have anything really formal.

It was just a lot of militias.

And they would come together at times that they saw fit to protect themselves or attack certain places.

But Saul is putting together an army.

And then we see in verse three, and Jonathan smote the garrison of the Philistines that was in Kiba.

So actually Jonathan leads these warriors into battle and there's this victory.

And the Philistines heard of it and Saul blew the trumpet throughout all the land saying, let the Hebrews hear.

And so we see this great victory happen with Jonathan and the people of Israel.

And we, we know through different stories in the Old Testament that Jonathan was a.

Was a fantastic military leader.

He was greatly gifted in that way.

And he shows leadership, he shows the ability to attack.

And we see that there is this victory that happens.

And there's a lot of ways that we can deal with victory in our life.

By the way, a lot of times we think about how we deal with defeat in the Christian walk.

And certainly it is to be noted how we should deal with defeat, how we should deal with struggles.

But oftentimes we struggle, sometimes even in the victory, because oftentimes we think about the victory being our own victory.

We think about the skills in our own selves being the reason why we had that victory.

And we actually see here later on that Saul takes credit for this victory.

And we know that none of us should be able to take any credit for any victory that we see in our life.

Ultimately, that's the victory of the lord.

So verse 4, and all Israel heard say that Saul had smitten the garrison of the Philistines.

Now that's interesting here.

Think, think about this for just a moment with me says in all Israel heard say that Paul, Saul had smitten a garrison of the Philistines.

Well, really it wasn't Saul at that point.

It was obviously under his leadership, but it was really Jonathan.

So Saul could have had the opportunity to deflect that and say, no, it was Jonathan.

Ultimately it was the Lord.

But we see that that's the trend with Saul.

Saul needs that approval.

Saul needs that, that control.

He needs that man praise, so to speak.

And so we see that happening already even in verse four.

And that Israel also was.

Had an abomination with the Philistines.

And the people were called together after Saul to Gilgal.

And the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with Israel.

Now this is very interesting here because we're going to see that the Philistines have a lot of technology.

They have a lot of at this point, chariots and, and powerful horsemen.

And, and that's really where we're going to see this, this huge enemy that's coming against them.

And so obviously that's going to be a cause for fear.

You know, a lot of times we can walk like we are champions of the faith when everything's going our way, when no one's coming against us.

But what really reveals what's in our heart, what really reveals how much faith we have is when the, the challenge comes when the.

When the enemy surrounds.

And so verse 5, the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with Israel.

30,000 Chariots and 6,000 horsemen and people as the sand, which is on the seashore in multitude.

And they came up and pitched in Mikmash eastward of Beth Haven.

So this is obviously a daunting army that is surrounding the people of Israel.

And there's could, there could be a lot of things that Saul does here.

And we're going to see that, that Saul is going to be in Gilgal at this point, verse six.

And when the men of Israel saw that they were in a straight.

They.

They see that they're in a difficult situation.

It says, for the people were distressed.

And so because of Saul's leadership and, and because of the lack of faith with these people, they are in a place of distress.

And, and ultimately we do know that there's times in our life where we will face situations of distress.

We will face situations that are stressful.

I used to think that the.

The key to life was avoiding stressful situations.

I used to think about that.

I used to think about, well, you know what?

I used to teach in a Christian school, okay, back in Florida.

And so I came right out of college and I started teaching in a school.

And I thought that that was the peak of stress in the world of teaching, know, 12th graders.

And the most stressful moments for me.

I'm just going to be honest with you guys.

When the, when the principal would come in and observe me and those, those surprise observations, and of course, it was on the day that my kids were not acting the way that they should be acting.

And I'm stressed out and I have so much stress.

And I'm like, man, this is such a.

They put me through a lot of stress.

They make me do all these, these classes.

They make me do all these lesson plans.

I'm just so stressed.

And so I really thought that maybe if I just got another job, maybe if I just got.

If I, if I was another career, there wouldn't be any stress.

And then I realized very, very early on in my life that it doesn't matter what career you're in, you're going to face stress.

So as a Christian, it's not a matter of avoiding the stresses of life, because the reality is there's some things that we can do to alleviate stress.

I really do believe that.

I think that a lot of the stress we bring on ourselves.

But there is a situation that might come up in our life that we can't avoid.

And oftentimes we think about, well, what do I do then?

Because we see these guys in First Samuel, Chapter 13, and we see all the people around them and we say, well, should they be stressed?

Well, to a degree there should be some distress because there's an.

There's an attack from the outside.

But there's a New Testament passage of Scripture that I think that we should think about.

And when I saw that word that they were distressed, I thought about what Paul says in 2nd Corinthians chapter 4, 2nd Corinthians, chapter 4.

Paul is talking to some people about things that he has gone through that he's personally experienced in his life.

And if you know anything about Paul, this is a different Saul, right?

We had the Saul, the Old Testament, the Saul of the New Testament, the Saul of the New Testament, or Paul, he went through a lot of persecution.

If anyone understood what it meant to have stress around him, it was Paul.

I mean, he went and preached and people came against him.

And he describes it this way in Second Corinthians, chapter four.

He says, we are troubled on every side, yet not distressed.

And so what he says is that there's trouble around me, there's stresses around me, but at the end of the day, at the.

At the heart of the issue, I don't have to live in that distress.

He says, we're perplexed, but not in despair.

Persecuted, but not forsaken, cast down, but not destroyed.

Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.

That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.

For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus sake.

That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.

So what is he saying?

He says this, yes, there are some stresses around us, but I'm not distressed.

Yes, I can be confused, but I'm.

But I'm not destroyed.

And at the end of the day, what really Paul is saying is this.

We have a greater hope in the Lord, that no matter what the stresses are around us, no matter what the enemy is around us, no matter what we're dealing with in our own personal life, we can look to the bigger picture of God being on our side and knowing that we're not destroyed.

And so we go back to 1st Samuel 13, and we see the men of Israel.

They see that they're in a tight place.

They see that there is a lot of Philistine army around them.

And it says that they were distressed.

And then the people did hide themselves in caves and in thickets and in rocks and in high places and in pits.

So this shows what happens.

Often when those stresses come.

People try to run from those problems for them.

They.

They.

What do they do?

They.

They hid themselves in caves and they allowed themselves to get to the place where they thought they could hide from the enemy.

They went to the thickets, they went to the rocks, they went to the high places.

And though they're really afraid, they're trembling.

They're.

They're going to a place that I think a Lot of times when we see the world today, we see people that when the stresses come, they try to run from those problems.

They.

They might not run to caves or thickets or high places, but they might run to substances, they might run to a relationship, they might run to neglecting the situation at hand to try to get away from the problem.

And so we know that Jonathan, as the leader, was bold.

He went against the enemy, but the men of Israel were not bold enough to even stand against the enemy that they had before them.

And so you've heard probably of the whole fight or flight situation.

Well, these guys flew, they left, they were afraid.

And I think that there's a lot of people in the world today.

And I think that when we see these stresses come around us, what the world might tell us is just.

Just avoid it, run away from it, slip away.

But instead we know that the Bible tells us to stand in the truth of God because God, 2nd Timothy 1, 7.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and of a sound mind.

And so the reality is, is that we have nothing to fear.

And so in that fear came the running.

In that fear came the hiding.

But we know that in faith comes the victory and faith comes the confidence.

And yet we see them not having faith, even though God has promised his protection for them.

And so verse number seven.

And some of the Hebrews went over Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead.

As for Saul, he was yet in Gilgal, and all the people followed him, trembling.

This is interesting here.

Saul had the position as king at this point.

And being the king, he was essentially the military leader.

And he was there in Gilgal.

That's where he was confirmed.

By the way, if you remember back in the story of Saul, that was really the place where they anointed him.

He was confirmed as king, and he still stayed there.

He's.

He's there months and months later.

And a lot of commentators might say that Saul was not in the place that he should be because he was trying to live in that glory of when he was confirmed as king and instead of being where he needed to be on the battlefield, but nonetheless we see that they honor Saul as the king and they're afraid, and so they go in trembling.

And we're going to see what happens here.

Verse 8.

And he tarried seven days according to the set time that Samuel had appointed.

But Samuel came not to Gilgal.

So it's important to note that God spoke through Samuel.

Samuel was a prophet.

And Samuel had told Saul to wait.

He had told him to be patient.

He had told him to wait on him.

But he had said seven days.

And the seven days had essentially run out and Samuel had not come to Gilgal, and the people were scattered from him.

And.

And so what does Saul do?

Well, we're going to see Saul here make a decision.

He says, I've got to make a decision.

Samuel's not here.

I know he said away for him, but I got to make a decision.

So Saul, he waits.

He was in Gilgal for many months and he's been waiting and he's afraid and there's anxiety.

And now every day seems to be stacking up against them.

And he knew the Philistines were coming with a big army.

And, you know, it's.

It's easy to see his anxiety here, basically saying this.

I've got to make a decision one way or the other.

I don't care what Samuel says.

I don't care what God says.

I need to do it.

And so we know that Samuel told Saul to wait for him at Gilgal, but yet Samuel would be a little bit late.

And sometimes when other people don't do what we expect them to do, that often causes us to work ahead.

It often causes us to have added anxieties in our life and added fear.

And so the waiting on Samuel became stressful for him.

And we see that the people are beginning to scatter.

And he often probably thought that I need to make a decision one way or the other.

And it's not prayerful.

It's.

It's not meditated upon the truth of the word of God.

It's not waiting on Samuel.

It's not waiting on God.

He just does verse nine.

And Saul said, bring hither a burnt offering to me and peace offerings.

And he offered the burnt offering.

Now, if we were just to skim over that, that would not sound too bad.

We would say, well, isn't Saul doing the right thing?

Isn't he just following God by giving a burnt offering?

Isn't he just trying to do what he can?

Well, there's a couple things that are wrong with this.

Number one, he's in complete disobedience to God through Samuel.

Samuel is the prophet of God.

Samuel is the one who says, thus saith the Lord.

So for Samuel to tell Saul something meant that God was telling Saul something.

And Saul was told to wait on Samuel whether it was the timeframe that he thought or not.

And he didn't wait.

So, number one, it was disobedience to God.

But Number two, we see that it's not even Saul's role to offer a burnt sacrifice.

He's the king.

He has nothing, no responsibility towards doing anything.

When it comes to being a priest, he's not a priest.

He's not a priest or a prophet.

He's a king.

Now, we do know that we have a prophet, priest and king in Jesus Christ, but not Saul.

Saul is not a prophet, priest and king.

He's a king, but he was not a priest.

So he could not offer that.

That was a big issue, that he did this.

And so he was not a priest.

He had moved forward with doing something that was not his responsibility.

And so Saul had no business doing what he does here.

He is knowingly in complete disobedience to God, but saying, I better do something.

And so I just want to pause here and I want to look at Saul's decision and I want us to, you know, obviously look at the negativity of Saul's decision, but also introspectively look into our own life to say, you know, have there been any times in my life, including I'm looking at my own life here, that I have just said, you know what, Lord, I'm tired of waiting.

I'm just going to do it.

Well, I'm just going to go ahead and get ahead of you.

It obviously is what I want.

It obviously makes sense to me.

But the Bible goes back to that idea of being spirit led and being spirit filled and saying, no, I need to have patience.

I need to wait upon the Lord.

I need to wait upon the Lord to renew my strength.

I need to wait upon the Lord to give me clarity and guidance, and so he doesn't wait upon the Lord.

And ultimately, what we see here is that Samuel does arrive very, very shortly after.

I mean, it's almost.

I would say it's almost comical to see how quickly Samuel comes after this, because it's like if you would have just waited just a few more minutes.

Let's look at it here.

It says in verse 10 and as.

And it came to pass that as soon as he had made an end of offering, the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came and Saul went out to meet him that he might salute him.

So it just shows the flaw to Saul's argument that, well, he's never coming, right?

And we can often tell ourselves all these lies when we start to get into that place of anxiety and fear and hopelessness and doubt.

Well, you know what?

Maybe.

Maybe Samuel's never coming.

Well, the truth is that Samuel was on his way it says there in verse 10.

And it came to pass that as soon as he had made an end of offering, the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came as well.

Samuel arrives.

And so Saul decided to perform this sacrifice.

He thought that he made the right decision.

But if he would have just trusted in God and just waited just another hour, another, another two hours, he would have been able to be totally walking in the obedience to the Lord.

But we know that it was a heart issue.

We know that Saul's issue was not just an action issue.

Oftentimes I, you know, deal with our kids and, you know, dealing with a child, you know, obviously it's a difficult thing and some of you are gurus on that.

And at some other point, I might ask you some advice on it.

But at the same time, when we're dealing with our children, you know, we don't just want to be dealing with the behaviors, even though that is important.

But really my heart is that when we deal with our children, we deal with their heart.

We want them to not want to do wrong, not just stop doing wrong.

We want them to know why it's wrong and why they shouldn't do it.

And that's really what we see with Saul doing.

Saul is, is kind of like one of those leaders that is always flying by the seat of his pants.

He's always just doing knee jerk reactions.

And it's kind of like this.

He's like, well, is this what you want me to do?

Is this what you want me to do?

I'm going to try to do it my way.

And really, at the end of the day, Saul, he just does something with his flesh.

He does something just on a whim.

He does something without giving it care and consideration.

And it really, we're going to see here.

It's a heart issue.

It's a heart issue.

His heart had not been given over to the Lord, at least not completely.

Saul decides to perform this.

And now Saul, he.

He has overstepped his role.

He has taken too far of a liberty in what God had given him.

And so we see that he comes out to salute Samuel, maybe hoping to have Samuel be okay with it.

It kind of reminds me of, you know, like I pull in at the house, I use my kid as analogy a lot.

I'm going to use them a lot tonight because they're not in here.

They probably won't hear this.

But when I get home and my kids like run out at me, I mean, a lot of times it's that they're happy to see me, but Sometimes it's like they're trying to get ahead of it.

They're trying to be really nice to me.

And I'm going, okay, what happened?

Well, dad, you know, you're.

Whatever broke and knocked off the wall, like, okay, so now I know why you're trying to be super nice to me.

So, so, so Saul's coming out to.

To salute him.

And I.

And I get the picture of, like, Saul coming out to Samuel, trying to appease this, knowing that he did wrong.

And, and so he comes out there and.

And we see verse 11.

And Samuel said, what has thou done?

So Samuel, Samuel knows, he understands, like, why are you coming out here?

What's going on?

He says, what have you done?

And Saul said, because I saw that the people were scattered from me.

So here's.

Here it is.

Here's what he does.

Saul begins to give his excuses.

He begins the self justification.

And this is what we do.

This is at least what I do.

When I get myself into a problem, I start thinking about all the reasons why I did it and all the reasons why it makes sense.

And so he says, well, look, because I saw that the people were scattered from me, he begins to blame the other people.

He begins to blame the situation.

He says, it's because of them I did this.

I mean, this is the classic situation at the very beginning, right?

Adam and Eve.

Right, Adam.

He goes, you know, it was because of her.

It was the wife you gave me, right?

And it's the idea that all of us come to a place in our life where we have to take accountability for the decisions that we make.

But Saul here doesn't.

To Samuel, he doesn't take accountability.

He says, because I saw that the people were scattered from me and that thou camest not.

So now not only does he blame the people for scattering, but now he's going to try to blame Samuel.

He says, you weren't here.

We can't blame somebody else.

I. I can't look at somebody else and go, well, because you weren't with me.

This is why I had to do this.

I had to sin because you were sinning.

Like, first and foremost, even if a person was sinning against us, it's not an excuse for us to return back and sin.

You know, we.

We shouldn't render evil for evil.

And so in this case, even though Samuel wasn't wrong, Saul accuses Samuel.

And then he basically blames Samuel for not being there.

He says, you weren't here with me and that thou camest not within the days appointed and that the Philistines gathered themselves together at Mikmash.

So, so he really gives three reasons why he didn't listen to the Lord.

None of them are valid.

He says, one, the people were scattering, two, you weren't here.

And three, the Philistines were coming.

And so he gave all of his self justification.

And, and so what I see this as, and I think this is something that isn't a stretch.

I, I, I look at verse number 11 and I see number one.

He, he blames other people because it's his ego he wants, he says the people are scattering.

He wanted to be a good leader.

So he says, well, you know what, what are the people going to think about me if they're all scattering?

I don't do anything.

And so it's a care and concern of the perception of who I am.

So it's ego, it was a matter of pride, it was a matter of ego.

And we even see that he blames Samuel.

And so we see that there's a heart of bitterness, there's a heart of judgment.

It could go all the way through this.

And we can see that even it's a heart of fear, right, that the Philistines were gathering themselves together in Mikmash.

We see all these negative attributes pouring out of a life of someone who was not walking in the obedience of the Lord.

It's just, it's like a cumulative effect.

It's a chain that keeps having more and more links when an individual is not following the will of God.

There's all these reasons, whether it be fear, whether it be judgment, whether it be ego, whether it be pride, whether it be just complete disobedience to God.

There is this cumulative effect that happens.

And, and that's what he says here.

He says, verse 12.

Therefore said I, the Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal.

So now what is he doing?

He's even making up situations that will happen.

Like, I know this will happen.

Definitely the Philistines will come if I don't do this.

And this, this is what I've seen even in my own life.

I start making all these irrational premonitions about things that might happen.

They haven't happened yet.

You know, isn't that what a lot of times anxiety is?

Anxiety is about something that hasn't happened, but we expect it to happen the way that we say it's going to happen.

At least that's for me in my life.

I'm like, I know it's going to happen.

This is what someone's going to say, and this is what someone's going to do.

And then I'm going to end up being in this problem.

And it hasn't even happened yet.

I had a situation, a couple, I think it was like about a week ago that I was just really stressed about.

And I thought, man, you know what?

This is going to happen and this person's going to do this.

And I was so stressed about it.

I was worried my whole day.

I was just thinking about it.

And you know what?

It never even happened.

It just never.

It just all felt.

I just had all this imaginary stuff in my mind.

Well, that's what we see really happening with Saul here.

Therefore said I, the Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal and.

And I have not made supplication unto the Lord.

And, and he says, and I have not made supplication unto the Lord.

I forced myself therefore, and offered a burnt offering.

Right there.

We see it right there.

We, we understand what's happening.

He, he.

He basically says this.

We saw the Philistines.

They definitely were going to come.

If he would have just obeyed God and trusted the Lord, he would have seen that God would have had them, that God would take care of them and he could have made.

Why didn't he make supplication to the Lord?

He says, and I have not made supplication unto the Lord.

And so he admits there, he admits that he didn't cry out to the Lord.

He didn't ask God if he would have said here, if Scripture would have said that Saul went to the Lord and Saul called him to do this, then that would be a whole other Bible story.

But what we see here is that he didn't go to the Lord.

He didn't petition God.

He didn't ask for God's guidance and help.

He says, I didn't go to the Lord.

I didn't ask him for the wisdom and the guidance.

Then I forced myself, therefore, I compelled myself, therefore, and offered a burnt offering.

What does he basically say here?

He says, I didn't go to God.

And I felt like I had to.

Felt like this was the only decision.

And that's what Satan does to us.

Satan and wants the boxes in a corner and make us think that the only decision is the bad decision and we've got to do it.

And that's exactly what we see here.

It just seems, it just seemed to him, it felt to him like it was the right thing to do.

Even though Saul felt compelled, he was like, like any of us we're not supposed to be ruled by our feelings, our fears, our concerns.

He didn't have to sin.

We know that.

All of us.

We never have to sin.

The Bible says in First Corinthians, chapter 10, that we don't have to give into the sin.

God gives us a way out.

We have the opportunity to seek after the Lord.

And he is always willing and ready to give us the wisdom and discernment to overcome the difficulty that is before us.

But he doesn't.

I think verse 12 is so telling.

In the character of Saul, he says, I didn't go after the Lord.

I didn't make a supplication unto him.

I just forced myself to do this.

Verse 13.

And Samuel said to Saul, thou has done foolishly.

Those are some hard words.

No one wants to be called a fool.

I mean, none of us want to be called a fool.

And the Bible says the fool has said in his heart there is no God.

And so really, the idea of being a fool in the biblical sense is not someone who is just unintelligent.

Okay, that's not what that's talking about here.

He's basically saying this to Saul.

Saul, you're acting like someone who doesn't believe in God, Right?

The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.

You're acting in your life as if there is no God.

You have a God that is protecting you.

You have a God who's providing for you.

You have a God who brought your people out of Egypt.

You have a God who part of the Red Sea.

You have a God who did all of these amazing things, but yet you're acting like he won't listen to you.

You're acting like he's not there.

And so he says, you have acted foolishly.

Thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which he commanded thee.

For now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel forever.

This is some serious stuff.

It basically says this.

You've missed out on the big blessing of having your family, your.

Your kingdom established in Israel forever.

Saul had the opportunity to have his family line be the line of kings.

But yet, because of his disobedience, because of his selfish heart, because of his pride, because of his fear, because of his anxiety, it says here that he loses the opportunity to have the kingdom in his family name.

And we're going to see where that is going to go.

In verse 14, he says, but now thy kingdom shall not continue.

Now, right then and there, he could have.

He could have just wiped Saul out And said, you're done.

There's a new guy up.

But isn't this the character of God, that he's still gracious and patient to allow Saul to continue on, to allow Saul for a sense of repentance, to allow Saul to have a place of redemption?

He says, hey, look, you're done, but you're not really done in the concept of.

He doesn't cut him off right there.

We know that Saul is allowed to finish his.

His.

His kinghood, his.

His leadership.

But verse 14, he says, but now thy kingdom shall not continue.

The Lord hath sought him, a man after his own heart.

Now we know who that's talking about.

We know that the next king is going to be a guy named David, a young man named David, who is characterized as a man after God's own heart.

Now, is.

Is David perfect?

No.

Is David completely obedient in every way?

No.

We're going to get into that study.

We're going to see that David made a lot of mistakes.

But the difference between Saul and David is not that one was perfect and one was not perfect.

The difference is, is that David was a man after God's own heart.

Saul was not a man after God's heart.

Saul was a man after his own heart.

Saul was a man after the heart of the people.

He wanted the people's approval.

He wanted the people's praise.

David was a man after God's own heart.

So he says here, you missed it because your heart, not because of your actions.

Your actions can be forgiven.

You can be you.

You can get to a place in your life to be broken and humble before the Lord and repent.

But God knew Saul's heart and knew that he did not have a heart of repentance.

So verse 14, it says, I'm going to bring a man after my own heart.

And the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou has not kept that which the Lord commanded thee.

So essentially what we see here is that Saul misses out on the blessing because of his heart, because of his lack of desire to honor God and to obey God.

So we'll move forward a little bit here.

It says in verse 15, and Samuel rose and got him up from Gilgalan to Gibbia.

Benjamin and Saul numbered the people that were present with him, about 600 men.

And Saul and Jonathan and his son Jonathan, his son.

And the people that were present with them abode in Gibeah, Benjamin.

But the Philistine encamped in Mikmash.

So this is essentially painting the picture of what happened.

Samuel proclaims God's judgment upon Saul and his whole household.

And, and now there's going to be a description of the situation that they're going to be facing after this.

And so really, from verses 15 on down, we see the, the threat that the Philistines are going to bring.

So, so because of the lack of Saul's faith, it affects the people that he's leading.

Right?

If Saul would have been standing in the faith of the Lord, he would have been able to see the protection of God not only upon his own family, but, but upon the whole people that he's leading.

And that goes for us in our life.

The, the decisions that we make in faith will definitely impact those around us, but the decisions that we make in fear and anxiety and hopelessness are also going to affect the people around us in a negative fashion.

So there's the, the, the physical threat that we see here in the Philistines.

But also we do know that because of our lack of faith, there's spiritual threats that we can face in our life.

And so we're going to see here in verse number 17.

And the spoilers came out of the camp of the Philistines.

And three companies, one company turned unto the way that leadeth to Orfra, unto the land of Shual, and another company turned to the way of Beth Horan.

And another company turned to the way of the border that look into the valley of Zeboim toward the wilderness.

And now we're going to see that as the Philistines come, the Philistines have really what we would see as military superiority over the people of Israel.

And, and really, that's not, It's.

It's not always what we have in the physical realm that's going to give us the victory.

We know that as Christians, it's because of what God gives us in our spiritual riches and our spiritual weapons.

But at the same time, if people are looking without faith, they're going to see all of these things that the Philistines have, and there's going to be great fear and there's going to be great anxiety.

So let's move forward a little bit here.

We're going to finish the end of the chapter, verse 19.

We're going to see for the rest of this time all the different things that they're facing now.

There was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel.

For the Philistines said, lest the Hebrews make them swords and spears.

But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen every Manish snare in his culture and his ax and his mattock.

Yet they had a file for the Maddox and, and for the Coulters and for the forks and for the axes and for the sharpening of the goat.

So it became.

So it came to pass in the day of the battle that there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people that were with Saul and Jonathan.

We see that they're so overwhelmingly under matched when it comes to their spears and swords.

But with the Saul and Jonathan, his son was there found and the garrison of the Philistines went out to the passage of Mikmash.

So we get to this place where we're like, okay, wow, it looks completely hopeless.

It looks completely like God is going to give up on his people.

And there were so few weapons available for the, is the Israelite army that really it was only the leadership, the royal family that had enough weapons.

And so really the rest of Israel had to just find something to fight with.

And so it was bad enough that they were outnumbered, but now we see that the Philistines have way more weapons.

And so at this point in time, we're going to get to First Samuel, chapter 14.

We're going to have to stop for this evening.

But we're going to really see a place in which Israelites have nowhere to turn other than God.

I mean, the only victory that they're going to be able to find is through the Lord.

And they would have to trust in God for this battle.

And this is where God brings us.

Even, even in the midst of our struggles and our battles, God always needs to bring us to a place where we can't turn anywhere else other than Him.

And oftentimes we don't want to get to this place.

You know, sometimes you hear the people talk about rock bottom and we're not necessarily talking about rock bottom as it comes to different things in our life.

But what we do need to understand is that as a Christian, it's the wisest thing is to get to this place as soon as possible.

Because if God needs to break us down, he will.

So the place where we realize that the only thing that we can do and the only place that we can rest in, the only place we can find victory is Him.

And I can look to situations in my own life for that.

I can tell you that I, I talk about it a lot because it was a pretty traumatic night for us in one day.

In the future, I, I want to give the whole testimony of the night that Silas was born.

Because there was a lot that transpired in, in that night, I can tell you.

There was a.

So leading up to that night, for whatever reason, I got like, I don't know what happened to me.

It was way before Silas was born, but I, I passed out.

And someone was like, yeah, yeah, you passed out when your child was being born.

No, I had another two kids born.

I didn't pass out.

There was something going on.

No one knows what happened, but I passed out.

I hit my head.

I was in the emergency room while my wife was laboring.

There was all this stress going on.

And then, of course, some of you know the story about Silas being born.

And it was, it was really one of the first times in my life that I just sat back and I said, okay, Lord, you obviously, I can't do anything right now.

I, I, I am just totally undone.

I'm putting it into your hands.

And, and that was in the moment, as, as fearful as that was, it was the most freeing moment to just say, lord, you are in control.

And, and he's the one who can control our lives.

Because really, the reality of all of it is, and I think we all know this is that as much as we think that we're in control, we're really never, ever in control.

It's always God in control, and we have to just relinquish that.

And so that's where we're coming to.

Jonathan's going to have a plan, and we're going to look at that plan.

And ultimately, we do know that God is so gracious and merciful to his people that even as their leader is disobedient, God still brings forth victory.

And, and that's what he does for us, even in our disobedience.

He extends grace and mercy.

And so we'll talk more about that when we come back next week when we look at 1st Samuel, chapter 14.

But may we not be like Saul?

May we go back and say, you know, are there points in our life that I'm struggling with patience?

Not, not passiveness.

Because passiveness is.

You know, we look at some people and we say, wow, they're just so patient.

Really, they're just passive.

They don't do anything.

Okay?

You can never be accused of doing anything wrong if you never do anything, okay?

But there's sin in that.

There's.

There's sin in being passive.

And so we're not talking about passiveness.

Like, I'm so afraid I just won't do anything.

But there is a sense of not acting ahead of God and being patient.

And then when he says go, then go.

It's that idea of, I'm ready to go, Lord.

But it's when you tell me to go.

It's when you let me loose.

It's when you tell me to start working and moving.

I can tell you there's a lot of times in my life that if I would have just been a little bit more patient, God would have blessed.

And there's a lot of times in my life that I.

That praise God.

I have impatient.

And I'm so thankful that I was.

I'm so thankful that I, I waited and I didn't rush ahead and do something that was not part of God's plan for my life.

And, and I think that that's a lesson that we could learn here from the life of, of Saul.

But what I, what I think we could boil it all down to is what we see there when God says to Saul through Samuel that he's picking someone after his own heart.

May we be those people that, you know, the reality is, is that my, my heart should be tied to what does God want from me?

Not, not, not what I want.

And then God just bless it or not what other people want from me.

Because that's a lot of times, sometimes I get wrapped up in that.

You know, I don't want what I want, but I want to make sure everyone else around me is happy.

Then when I do that, that sounds good.

But ultimately, if I'm making other people happy and not making God happy, I'm not doing the right thing.

I must first and foremost please the One who created me and the One who saves me, and then from there deal with the situations that fall out from that.

And so that's something to think about as well in that lesson.

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

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

If you would like to find out more information about our church or this sermon, you can find us at middletownbaptistchurch.org or find us on Facebook or YouTube.

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Thank you so much.

God bless.

Have a wonderful day.