Kingship (1 Samuel 10-26)

Zane discusses God's kingship and the contrast between Saul and David.

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Hey everybody, as we are getting near finishing up this uh book of 1 Samuel that we've all been reading, hope you've enjoyed it. Uh I actually I read 1 Samuel once in January, I think, and I've read a couple commentaries on 1 Samuel this year and have put some some thought into it. And so I just wanted to highlight one idea for you guys from this book. Uh, and it's really the idea of kingship. So if we look at the history of Israel up to this point, we have seen God use Moses as a prophet and as a the obvious leader of Israel, and then that gets passed on to Joshua, and then Israel kind of gets split up some, and we have the judges period where the uh where God uses the judges, especially in problem solving, sometimes in uh a bit of prophecy. And then we get to Samuel, and Samuel clearly becomes God's guy. Samuel, it says that the Lord never let his words fall to the ground. And so he clearly has this friendship with God. He becomes this clear national leader to the nation of Israel. And we get to this point where Samuel is older and the people are starting to get concerned about his age, and they say, Samuel, we want a king like the other nations. And they're not doing this from a good heart position or from trust in God. They're doing this from a uh seemingly a negative set of desires. But there have already been some uh prophetic words, I guess, throughout the scripture, especially in Deuteronomy, I think it's chapter 17 that say that God is going to give Israel a king one day. And so God tells Samuel, okay, you know what? Tell them yes. There he says, He says, The people are rejecting me by doing this. And what you realize during this is that the people already have a king, and their king is God, and Samuel is the king's messenger. And so that is how Israel has currently been governed is with God as king and with a clear messenger to the people. But the people want to be like the other nations, and they want to have a big, strong king to lead them. And so God says, okay, fine, I'll give you one. And so God chooses Saul. And then, of course, we have David coming toward the end of the book. And I just want to point out to you as you read through this and as you think about what you've read, that a clearer point of this book is to talk about governance and kingship and trust and obedience. Essentially, the question where who is leading you, right? Who is leading you and what is their character and who are they listening to? Because Samuel's leading the nation of Israel, but he is clearly just only doing what God tells him to do. The rest of the book, and as we go through 2 Samuel as well, uh in a couple months, it clearly, these books clearly contrast the life of Saul with the life of David. And they start out in very similar ways. You know, I think a lot of times Saul gets a really bad rap from the start. But at the beginning of this, Saul seems to be an impressive guy, but also a humble guy, not someone who's power-hungry, not someone who ever imagined himself to be king. We even get this kind of comical moment where Samuel is going to anoint him as king in front of all of Israel, and he hides among some boxes, and so that they can't find him. He might even be a little bit scared, but he definitely, we definitely see this sense of humility and definitely not power-hungry, definitely not trying to come against the Lord or any of these things. And so we get to watch the life of Saul play out, and then we also kind of get this parallel scene of David's life playing out as he heads toward being God's anointed one who will be king. And so we first see Samuel anoint Saul, and the spirit of God comes on Saul, and Saul begins to prophesy, and people are shocked by this. So, what I want you to realize from the beginning is that Saul wasn't some kind of bad guy that God chose to punish the people of Israel. He wasn't doomed from the start. At least in my reading, it seems to me that, you know, God really did put his anointing on this guy and intend for him to lead Israel well. And Saul made his own choices as he went along. And I feel like that's where a lot of the contrast comes later with David. Now, of course, David, we see throughout in 2 Samuel, he does make some very bad choices at moments. But the ways that he responds to making his bad choices and uh the way that his life progresses, especially at the start of his anointing, at the start of his kingship, definitely contrast the life of Saul. So whenever Saul becomes king, we have a couple moments that things get a little weird. We have this one moment where he makes this unlawful sacrifice. He's waiting for Samuel to come. Samuel doesn't make it to this place as quickly as he wants to, so Saul just makes it himself. And that's sort of the first strike. And then we see God give Saul this command that he's going to go defeat uh the Amalekites and that he's supposed to totally destroy them, but instead he lets his men keep some of the best livestock, and he spares King Agag's life. And so we just get into these parts where Saul is seemingly mostly obeying what God's told him to do. He's going to war. He's freeing the Israelites from the Philistines, which he does well, and he's freeing the Israelites from the Amalekites and uh succeeding in battle when God tells them to. So for the most part, he's kind of doing what God tells him to do, but he's also kind of doing it in his own way. And then he starts making excuses and blaming other people whenever Samuel comes and talks to him about it. And then you start to see that Saul has a lot of pride because he's actually begging Samuel, no, don't make me look bad in front of all the people. In fact, honor me in front of all the people. And I know I should have done better and listened to God better, but don't make me look bad. And so this plays out more and more throughout the book when we see Saul become uh jealous of David. He goes and starts trying to kill David. At this point, we know that the Spirit of the Lord has totally left Saul. And Saul in his hardness of heart and his poor choices, he loses what God has called him to. And I think this is actually a really good warning for our own lives is that, you know, God has good plans for all of us, but we do get to make choices. And God does allow us to live with our choices very often. Just like he allows the Israelites to have what they choose and saying that they want a king, just like all the other nations, instead of just being governed by God and his prophets. In the same way, we see Saul first turning to God, but then we see Saul taking the calling that God's put on his life and really botching it and doing it in his own way. And I think this is a good warning to us that if we want to do life in our own way, then God will likely let you do that. It just probably won't have a good outcome for your life. And I think that you're gonna, I think that very often the outcome of that is that you're either walking with the Spirit of God or you're not walking with the Spirit of God. And this goes perfectly with what we teach so often at Clear Path, which is all of life in the Spirit. You know, we've been teaching lately, if you have, if you're living life with the Holy Spirit, letting him guide you each and every day, then man, you have everything you need. You have the fruits of the spirit, you have the gifts of the spirit, you have the power of God, you have the righteousness and the joy and the hope of God. If you don't walk with the spirit, then man, you have nothing. And you just become a a victim to the attacks of the enemy, like we see Saul overtaken by these demonic spirits, and he just gets completely consumed by his own rage and his own jealousy, and he's just a terribly depressed person. On the flip side, we see David be chosen by God and anointed by Samuel. And David starts out also very humble, not as someone who ever expected to be king, not even the one of his brothers, the last one of his brothers that he would have that anyone would have expected to be chosen as the future king. He receives the Spirit of God just like Saul did. And but David seems to stay more humble, and he's not in a rush to take over the throne. We see him continue shepherding. He starts going and playing the heart for Saul and just serving Saul. And then we have this moment in chapter 17, of course, the maybe the most famous moment in the book, where the story of David and Goliath, where seemingly of anyone in the nation, surely Saul should be the one who can trust God and count on God. And he's this big, strong, successful warrior, and surely he should be the one going out and fighting Goliath. But the spirit of God is on David, and even more so, David is filled with trust for God and reliance on God. Whereas Saul is kind of following God's ways, along uh God's instructions along the way, but also seems to be relying on his own strength, his own decision making. David seems to be so dependent on God, where there's no way David thinks he can go, you know, take out this huge warrior, uh, just man versus man, but he just believes that God has proven himself time and again and that God will help him to win this battle. And so this story of David and Goliath seems to be kind of a real telling moment in the story of Saul versus David and David's trust for God to believe him to do the impossible. And so as we move on, we see Saul, you know, of course, like we we said, he becomes very jealous of David. Everyone who has loved Saul, the nation of Israel loved Saul, but now they've really begun to love David even more than they love Saul, and his jealousy gets him and he starts hunting David. And and David has these couple moments where he has the chance to kill Saul and take over the throne. And that seems like it could be very justified. First of all, you he can easily claim self-defense. Second of all, God has already anointed him king. He already he is full of the Spirit of God. But David has such an honor for the word of God and for the anointing of God that he says, as long as Saul's king, I am not going to touch God's anointed. He keeps this real humility about him and this real fear of God. And man, I think there's so much that we can learn from that. There have been so many times in life where I get where I get arrogant, or maybe I even have some thoughts that seem justified, where I could do something that I could say, well, this is okay for me to do, or this is right for me to do because of this and that. But David seems to stay so far away from that line where he would be nearing sin. Like, no, as long as Saul is king and God has put him there, then I'm gonna honor him. And I've always tried to even kind of learn from this when I think about different ministers and ministries. This is just my thought off the top right now. But, you know, sometimes I see these quote ministers on YouTube, and it seems like their main ministry is to talk about how bad other ministries are. Oh my goodness, I hate that so much. That sounds like the most dangerous thing. And I feel like that people who live their life that way, they could use a dose of this fear of God and this honor of people that are trying to live their life for God or that God has anointed to do something. They're probably not going to be perfect. And maybe they've sinned against you, maybe they've screwed up in some way. But I don't ever want to be the one who's going out and pointing my finger at God's anointed people and saying, look at everything that they're doing wrong. I want to let God handle that. And that's what seems to be David's uh thing here. But I just want you to notice his great humility and that he doesn't just go try and take over the throne, even though he probably could have. The people of Israel loved him, he could have killed Saul, and all the soldiers certainly would have followed him. He already had God's blessing, but he really just does everything the right way. And so Saul's trajectory and David's trajectory up to this point have started to become very contrasted to each other. And I want you to keep an eye out for that as we read first the rest of 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel this year. I want you to really keep an eye out for those contrasts and just let God speak to you about his kingship because it seems that David's that the thing that keeps David safe as king is that in David's heart, God is really always king. And David doesn't let himself ever get so puffed up as to take the kingship away from God. And anyway, that's my thought for today. I don't want this to get too long. Just wanted to give you a little bit of what runs through my mind as I read this book of 1 Samuel. And I just want to pray, God, that you would be king of our lives, that we would not trust our own plans, that we would not uh trust our own strengths or our own image, that we would not protect ourselves over being obedient to you and following your spirit. Lord, I pray that we would not follow anyone else either, like these Israelites who say, We want a king. God, you've given us your spirit, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't ever have spiritual leaders that we follow in some measure. But God, as I see people follow uh political leaders in an over-the-top way, God, I pray that you would forgive us and that you would let us turn toward you, not any structure, not any power of this world. And I pray that we would not put our trust in any man. Lord, even the greatest ministers that we know of, they have sinned and they have fallen short of your perfect glory. But God, you are perfect and you are trustworthy in every way. So I pray that each of us would put our trust completely in you. And in any way, if we've begun to put our trust in our jobs or in our skills, or in our artistic pursuits, or in our successes in this life, or in any other person, in a parent, in a friend, in an advisor, in a public leader. God, I just pray that you would just make us realize one more time right now to turn our hearts to you. And that you would be king of our lives. That you, Lord, would be the only king and the only one that we trust and the only one that we have devoted our lives to completely. And I pray that you would speak to us more as we read these books, and that we would really begin to understand more and more your kingship in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, guys, thanks for listening to me talk for one more time. Talk to you guys soon. Love you.