This is the third (of four) in the series about Heaven from pastor Peter Churness.
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Peter preaches from an outline, and does not provide a written version, but below is a rough outline.
Jesus promised three major things about life after death:
The heart of the Christian message has always been foolish and offensive. God enters the world as a baby? The victorious messiah conquers by being tortured to death? It sounds nuts. But there is a deeper wisdom here, a strength that is beyond comprehension. For those who receive it, the benefits are beyond comparison.
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CHRISTMAS 2023. MATTHEW 2:1-20. LUKE 2:34-35. 1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-31.
At Christmas time we like to have warm cozy feelings about stars and mangers and babies. And those feelings have their place. Childbirth is a natural time for tender feelings. I believe the power of our feelings at Christmas is an echo of the incredible power of the moment when God took on human flesh. But sometimes, we use those warm cozy thoughts to affirm our own self-oriented ways. Christmas becomes a moment each year when we feel good and peaceful, regardless of the state of our souls.
I’m all for feeling good and peaceful, but let’s feel that way for the right reasons. If they are true Biblical reasons, we can feel peaceful at any time of year, not just Christmas. If they are the wrong reasons, it will be a false, deceptive peace. The angels declared “Peace on earth,” to the shepherds. but it wasn’t a general peace. It was peace specifically among those with whom God is pleased. In other words, peace among those who have received the Messiah as the Lord.
The fact is that baby entering the world helplessly was the opening salvo of a tremendous spiritual battle. Responding with “Aww, how sweet,” is not really an option Jesus gives us. Simeon puts his finger on the heart of the matter: We stand or fall based upon how we react to him.
When we look at the whole Christmas story, told between both Matthew and Luke, we get a snapshot of how different people responded to God’s unfathomable appearance as a baby born in poverty and humility. We have Mary, Elizabeth and Zachariah, Joseph, Simeon and Anna. We also have Herod, the leaders in Jerusalem, the Magi, and the shepherds. I want to look at how some of them responded to Jesus, and then think about our own response to him.
Even before he was born, Jesus shattered and reoriented the lives of the people around him. It is virtually certain that almost no one believed Mary when she claimed to still be a virgin. By accepting Jesus into her body and her life, Mary lost the respect of her entire town, and probably also many friendships.
Joseph also lost the respect of the town. He had to give up his business in Nazareth, and later, he and his family had to flee for their lives.
When he was eight days old, Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem, which was about five miles away from Bethlehem. While they were there, they encountered an old man named Simeon. The Holy Spirit revealed to Simeon that the little baby was the promised messiah. Simeon praised God, and then:
34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, “This child is the reason that many people in Israel will be condemned and many others will be saved. He will be a sign that will expose 35 the thoughts of those who reject him. And a sword will pierce your heart.” (Luke 2:34-35, GW)
Simeon didn’t see only a sweet little baby. He saw in Jesus the crossroads of life. He understood prophetically that the way people chose to respond to Jesus would become the most important thing.
When Jesus himself grew up, he made it clear, over and over again, that he agreed with Simeon. He plainly thought the fate of every human being would be determined by how they responded to him.
32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.
34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
MATTHEW 10:32-39, ESV
Listen to him. He’s saying: “You must love me more than anyone else in the world. You must be ready to choose me over even your own family. You must be ready to die for my sake.” These aren’t the words of a mellow “everyone get along” type of spiritual guru. This is someone who clearly believes that he stands in the place of God. He might be a egomaniac, or he might be God in the flesh, but he doesn’t leave us the option of seeing him as some sort of metaphor of love, or the goodness of all mankind. We must either condemn him as a dangerous sociopath, or worship him as God.
The point I’m getting at here is that even when he was a baby, people were forced to make that choice. From his very conception, he was the reason people were either saved or condemned. The way others responded to him exposed their inward state of mind. Hundreds of years before the day of Jesus’ birth, the prophet Isaiah spoke about the coming messiah:
12 Do not call everything a conspiracy that these people say is a conspiracy. Do not fear what they fear; do not be terrified. 13 You are to regard only the LORD of Armies as holy. Only he should be feared; only he should be held in awe.
14 He will be a sanctuary; but for the two houses of Israel, he will be a stone to stumble over and a rock to trip over, and a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 15 Many will stumble over these; they will fall and be broken; they will be snared and captured. (Isaiah 8:12-15, CSB)
He will be a sanctuary to those who receive him. The center of joy and peace. But he will also be “a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,” who rejected him. We find that this is quite literally true not only when Jesus was grown, but even when he was first born. Herod, king in Jerusalem, heard of this child in the most unsettling way possible. Magi came from a far country, seeking to worship a recently-born king. Matthew 2:3 says: “When King Herod and all Jerusalem heard about this, they became disturbed.” Herod and his cronies saw this only as a threat to his own power (a conspiracy?), and to the future of his dynasty. The innocent child, simply by being who he was, provoked Herod to immediate contempt, fear and hatred. Herod’s malice failed to eliminate the threat. Instead, he perpetrated a horrible atrocity to no purpose.
Herod fell in relationship to this Baby. When the Baby had grown into a child, Herod died. Even those who eventually succeeded in killing the messiah are long dead, while the messiah himself lives.
These days, we think humility is good. We think it’s cool that lowly shepherds were given the good news while princes were ignored. We think it’s wonderful that in the birth of the messiah, God honored the poor, while leaving the rich to their own devices. But we only think this way because of the Baby Himself, and we don’t always realize that.
People in those days honored noble blood and wealth. The idea that God did not was unthinkable. God, born in a stable? Ridiculous! The messiah part of a poor family? No way. God, dying for his enemies, killed by his enemies, rather than he killing them? Never!
That little stable 2,000 years ago turned much of what was believed to be true on its head.
Let’s be honest. Even today, the idea that God came into the world as a human baby sounds incredibly far-fetched. The claim that he obtained victory by being publicly humiliated and killed is ridiculous. To insist that we will stand or fall based upon how we respond to him is offensive. It’s foolish to worship one little baby from one poor family. The apostles of this messiah agreed:
18 The message about the cross is nonsense to those who are being destroyed, but it is God’s power to us who are being saved. 19 Scripture says, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. I will reject the intelligence of intelligent people.” 20 Where is the wise person? Where is the scholar? Where is the persuasive speaker of our time? Hasn’t God turned the wisdom of the world into nonsense? 21 The world with its wisdom was unable to recognize God in terms of his own wisdom. So God decided to use the nonsense of the Good News we speak to save those who believe. 22 Jews ask for miraculous signs, and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but our message is that Christ was crucified. This offends Jewish people and makes no sense to people who are not Jewish. 24 But to those Jews and Greeks who are called, he is Christ, God’s power and God’s wisdom. 25 God’s nonsense is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. 26 Brothers and sisters, consider what you were when God called you to be Christians. Not many of you were wise from a human point of view. You were not in powerful positions or in the upper social classes. 27 But God chose what the world considers nonsense to put wise people to shame. God chose what the world considers weak to put what is strong to shame. 28 God chose what the world considers ordinary and what it despises—what it considers to be nothing—in order to destroy what it considers to be something. 29 As a result, no one can brag in God’s presence. 30 You are partners with Christ Jesus because of God. Jesus has become our wisdom sent from God, our approval, our holiness, and our ransom from sin. 31 As Scripture says, “Whoever brags must brag about what the Lord has done.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-31, GW)
It is foolish. It is offensive. And God made it that way deliberately. God chose an ordinary poor family, the kind of people who are despised by elites. He chose a humiliating death to bring about eternal abundant life. He chose to be a baby in a stable, to be part of a family with no home of their own, so that we could have an everlasting home. There is sweetness and tenderness to the scene of Mary, Joseph, and the little baby. But those things are just extras. The magnificent power of God was infused into that simple, humble moment. And the way we respond to that baby means everything to our future.
She never knew it during her earthly life, but even though Mary lost the respect of the people of Nazareth, she gained the respect of untold millions throughout all generations since then. So did Joseph. Herod, however, rightly went down in history as the murdering despot that he was. We celebrate the wisdom of the Magi, and shake our heads at the Jerusalem rulers. But for all of us there comes a moment when we become aware that we are asked to take a leap of faith. There’s a moment when we realize, “This is offensive. This is crazy. This turns the wisdom of the world on its head.”
What could give us the strength to choose this weakness, this foolishness, this offensive trust? The certainty of God’s love. He came as that little baby and died for all of us long before we were even born. Knowing the times we would reject him, knowing the ways we would hurt him, he went through it all any way. He willingly suffered to save us. Knowing that can give us the courage to choose him, even when we feel foolish, even when it might offend those around us. He loved us first. He loves us still, whether or not we know it.
So, I pray that when we experience those moments of opportunity to trust him, we will not be like Herod, having contempt for this child, despising and fearing him. Instead, let’s be like Simeon, who rejoiced, and who recognized that what is most important is how we receive the incredible gift of this child. Don’t worry about the times in the past we’ve ignored him. Trust him now. Receive him now. Let his grace cover the times we have failed.
This isn’t a one time thing. Over and over in our lives, there are moments when we can receive God’s will and work in our lives, or turn away from it. Let’s make it a habit to receive the wonderful gift of this child, over and over again, now and every day.
This is the second from pastor Peter Churness in his advent series with a focus on heaven. Again, there is no written version, so you’ll have to listen.
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This year for advent will do a short series by pastor Peter Churness, who serves in Gig Harbor, Washington. Peter is actually the founder of Life Together Churches (LTC). For the first couple years, Peter served as the primary leader of LTC, and I offered him support and encouragement, along with various resources that I had created. Then our roles reversed. Peter is a very dear friend, and a gifted teacher, and I’m looking forward to hearing his advent messages.
Peter doesn’t usually write out his sermons, so we do not have a text version to share, but he will be giving us some optional discussion questions. I’ll post those here, and you can consider those as you reflect on his message.
By the way, I do realize that we’re already in the second week of advent, but there is no law that requires us to adhere to the church season. It just worked out best to do it this way. Enjoy the message!
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
Warm up Question: Growing up (or even more recently) what was something that you had a hard me waing for? Discussion Questions
Going into this series, what has been your view of heaven? How do you picture it?
What quesons do you have about heaven?
What do you think about the idea that the New Earth is not a totally different place, but our present Earth made new again?
Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 speaks of the centrality of faith, hope and love. It’s maybe easy to see what Paul means by faith and love. What does he mean by hope?
Jonathan lived by faith. He trusted the Lord, and gave the Lord opportunities to lead him and use him. The result was a great victory for God’s people. Today, the most important way we learn to know God and trust him like that is through the Bible.
To listen to the sermon, click the play button:
For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.
To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 1 Samuel Part 11
1 Samuel #11. 1 Samuel 14:1-23
Please read 1 Samuel chapter 14 in order to understand what we will talk about here. I recommend using the New Living Translation (NLT) because it helps to clarify some things that are a little confusing in other versions.
Last time we saw what came out of Saul when he was pressured. In that particular situation, what the Lord wanted him to do was wait in faith. He did not want Saul to try and save himself. He did not want Saul to just do something to hold things together. Instead, he wanted Saul to trust Him. But Saul tried to make something happen on his own. This revealed his internal commitment to his own way of doing things, and the prophet Samuel told Saul that the Lord could not use him to build a dynasty.
In chapter 14, Saul and his son Jonathan and the rest of the army were still basically in the same situation. The Philistines had almost cut the nation of Israel in half. The ordinary people in the region of the invasion went into hiding. Saul started out with 3,000 professional soldiers, but at the beginning of chapter 14, he was left with only 600. In other words the only difference between the situation recorded here in chapter 14 and that in chapter 13, is that now, Saul has lost two thirds of his men to desertion. All his efforts to do something on his own achieved nothing. Some might have thought of Saul’s actions as bold leadership. He offered the sacrifice. He made a move. He didn’t just sit there. But that didn’t stop a large majority of people from deserting anyway.
Now, we might conclude from this that when great pressure is upon us, the Lord wants us to sit still and wait for him, and do nothing. That could indeed be true. But we can’t make a law out of it. Sometimes the Lord may indeed want us to wait, even when things seem to be falling apart. But at other times, in almost the exact same situation, he may want us to act. The key to understanding whether you should act, or whether you should sit still is to cultivate your relationship with the Lord. The Bible is an indispensable tool in doing that. If we treated it as only a rule-book, we wouldn’t need God at all. We could just follow the book. But actually, “the book” is all about helping us follow God, not a pre-determined set of rules covering all possible eventualities.
In fact, I think that is one of the major lessons of this part of 1 Samuel. We are to walk in ongoing faith, seeking the Lord and listening to him. But Saul tried to live by rules – rules which he changed to suit himself. In chapter fourteen we have a better example: Saul’s son Jonathan.
Jonathan, is NOT a chip off the old block. He appears to be a man of great faith. Even though he saw that his father had made a mistake, Jonathan did not, from that, assume that it meant things were the same for him and he should sit still and do nothing. He seems to have had a genuine faith relationship with God. He is willing to act, but he is also willing to not act. He knew the point was to ask this question: “Lord, what do you want to do in this situation?”
We see Jonathan’s faith first in his remarks to his armor bearer, his assistant in battle.
6 “Let’s go across to the outpost of those pagans,” Jonathan said to his armor bearer. “Perhaps the LORD will help us, for nothing can hinder the LORD. He can win a battle whether he has many warriors or only a few!” (1 Samuel 14:6, NLT)
He had it on his heart to do something. He assumed that the Lord was working through that. In addition, see how he was motivated not by fear, but by faith. In chapter 13, Saul acted out of fear. He thought, “I am outnumbered already, and now I am losing men. I just need to do something.” Jonathan thinks the opposite: “It doesn’t matter how many men we have. What matters is whether or not God wants us to do something. If he does, the two of us are enough.” Jonathan’s actions were prompted not by fear, but by faith. The things he did came from the relationship he had with God.
Notice that Jonathan didn’t leave it there. He was prompted by faith. He trusted that God didn’t need 3,000 or even 600 men to defeat the Philistines. But he did want God to confirm that he was leading Jonathan to fight. So when they got closer, Jonathan gave the Lord a chance to show him, one way or another, what He wanted him to do.
8 “All right, then,” Jonathan told him. “We will cross over and let them see us. 9 If they say to us, ‘Stay where you are or we’ll kill you,’ then we will stop and not go up to them. 10 But if they say, ‘Come on up and fight,’ then we will go up. That will be the LORD’s sign that he will help us defeat them.” 1 Samuel 14:8-10, NLT).
Jonathan was not following a rule book. He was following the living God. And so he made sure that he allowed space for the Lord to interact with him, to show him what to do. As it happened, what the Lord wanted Jonathan to do was the opposite of what he had wanted Saul to do just a short time earlier.
The Philistines taunted Jonathan. Basically, they shouted, “Hey, c’mere. We want to show you something.” It was basically trash-talking. If he were to climb up to their position, they would kill him. They didn’t expect him to take the bait. But this is the sign that Jonathan asked for, so he and his armor-bearer climbed up to them.
The Philistines had assumed they were just trading taunts. They didn’t really expect two people to be crazy enough to attack uphill against overwhelming numerical superiority. They didn’t count on a warrior like Jonathan, and they didn’t count on God. Jonathan and his assistant killed twenty Philistines in a short span of time and within a pretty small area. We already know from the end of chapter 13 that Jonathan had iron weapons and armor. It is possible that many of the Philistines in the garrison he attacked did not, which explains in part how he was able to overwhelm them, and also explains part of their panic. Even so, it is likely that at least a few of the Philistines had good weapons, since they were stationed close to the Israeli army. The text clearly means us to understand that Jonathan was victorious because the Lord was with him, not because of better weapons. One possibility is that Jonathan quickly defeated the soldiers who had iron weapons, and this caused the others with inferior weapons to flee.
The attack threw the Philistine garrison into panic and confusion. Perhaps they sensed something supernatural in the ferocity and deadliness of Jonathan’s attack. Their panic spread to the other Philistine soldiers as they fled. Apparently, God timed an earthquake to coincide with the assault, only increasing the confusion and fear.
Soldiers talk about the “fog of war.” In the midst of battle things are very hectic and often happen very fast and confusion develops in a hurry. The Philistines had no radios, no overhead airplanes or other modern conveniences to offset the fog of war. Things got worse for them and soon there was a general panic.
Saul, encamped some distance away with his army noticed the stir in the Philistine positions. Just a few days (at the most, weeks) earlier, Saul had been ready to do something – anything – to try and make something happen and show himself a leader. If he had listened to God, he would have heard that at that point in time, that was the wrong course. But Saul still hadn’t learned his lesson. Now was the time to act. If he had prayed and listened for God’s response, he would have known it. But Saul did not have that kind of relationship with God. Last time, Samuel told him that it was wrong to act. So now, when he should have been following up on Jonathan’s bold blow, Saul hesitated.
He sent for the priest and the Ark of the Covenant. Saul didn’t have the confidence that Jonathan had, the confidence that God would lead him. So he wanted to have the priest perform a religious ceremony to tell him what to do. Even so, as the ceremony began, the confusion among the Philistines increased even more, and Saul basically said to the priest, “Forget it. Let’s just go.”
So you see he wasn’t really serious about hearing from God. He just wasn’t sure at first if the battle would go his way. When things got to a point where it was obvious that the Philistines could be defeated, he dropped his attempt to hear from God, and instead, joined in the battle without seeking the Lord’s will. As before in his life, in this situation, Saul just looked at God as a means to an end. He only wanted to connect with God in situations where God could do something for him. When he saw all of the Philistines running away, he decided he didn’t need God’s guidance. You can see that he didn’t know God well enough to be led by him in the way that Jonathan was.
The battle became a rout. Remember, the Philistines were led by five kings, from five different Philistine cities. So, many of the professional warriors on the battlefield did not know each other, and most of the peasant-soldiers certainly didn’t. It is highly unlikely that there were any kind of regular Philistine uniforms. There would have been many different war banners, designating different leaders and army units.
Now, during the initial assault, the first garrison of Philistines were faced with only two warriors: Jonathan and his armor bearer. They lost a lot of men, and quickly fled. It is likely that those retreating Philistines ran headlong toward other Philistine positions to get away. But the other Philistine units may not have recognized them. They may have been on the lookout for enemies, and then they saw a group of unknown soldiers running towards them. In other words, the retreat of the Philistine unit that Jonathan routed was probably mistaken as an Israeliteattack by the other Philistine units that they fled toward. This kind of confusion spread rapidly. Scripture records that they began fighting each other, and this is probably why.
By the time Saul and the rest of his 600 men joined in it was easy. The Israelites who had been hiding realized the Philistines were fleeing, and they came out to help also. Apparently some Israelites had joined the Philistines, or been conscripted by them. They turned on their Philistine masters. Now the victory was really on.
So in chapter thirteen, the Lord wanted Saul to wait but Saul didn’t. Now, in chapter fourteen Jonathan was not supposed to wait, and Saul hesitated when he should not have. How was he supposed to know what to do?
Part of Saul’s problem is that he didn’t approach God as a person. He treated God like a thing to be used. So, he had no idea how to understand God’s will in any situation. When I was at Oregon State University, I took a course in botany. I was given a “key” to the flora of Western Oregon. It was a book, about as thick as a bible, that could help me figure out the species of virtually any plant I was likely to see in that area. The way it worked was to present me with a possible choice, and, depending on what I chose, send me to another page with another set of choices, until my choices narrowed down to the correct answer. So I might start by deciding if I was dealing with an evergreen or deciduous plant. Say I chose deciduous. Then it would ask me to choose whether the leaves were lobed or not. Say I chose lobed. Next I might choose whether the leaves were directly opposite each other, or if they were staggered, or if they were in clumps. And so in one case I proceeded through each step, covering every possible plant I might encounter, until I narrowed it down to find out I was holding poison oak, which I could have found out just by waiting a few days for the rash to appear.
Sometimes, we are tempted to treat the Bible or religion like a “key” to life. We expect that we should find specific instructions for every possible scenario. And we assume that if the answer was “X” one time, than the next time we encounter a similar scenario, the answer will still be “X.” That was part of Saul’s mistake. For him, religion was only ever a means to an end.
But that isn’t what true faith is about. True faith is about getting to know God, and responding to him. Though the Bible is not some kind of “answer key,” it is the most important way we have to get to know God. You cannot get to know God apart from the Bible. The Bible helps us get to know the Lord – and then the Lord tells us what he wants us to know, trust or do. God’s guidance will not contradict the Bible.
The lesson here is not, “you should wait when you are pressured.” Nor is it, “you should move forward decisively when you are pressured.” No. The message is that you should cultivate your relationship with God. Then when you are under pressure and need to know what to do, you won’t be like Saul, hesitating and unsure. You can simply check with the Lord, and move forward – or not – as he leads you. Jonathan shows us the way.
This shows us how much we need to read the Bible regularly, because the Bible helps us get to know God. Again, the Bible is not like an answer key, but it is indispensable. If you don’t read (or listen to) the Bible regularly, you are in danger of thinking your own feelings are the voice of God. You might start, like Saul, using God or religion as a tool to justify whatever you want to do. It is clear that Saul practiced religion without really knowing God at all. I know I sound like a broken record, because I say this sort of thing all the time. But I am still talking with people all the time who claim that they want to follow Jesus, but they don’t take even five minutes a day to get to know God by reading the Bible. I don’t understand how you can be serious about following Jesus if you don’t read the Bible. Without something objective, outside yourself – like the Bible – you will end up thinking your own thoughts and feelings are God. You may end up thinking “Christianity didn’t really work for me.” I say: “It won’t work for you without the Bible.” Please, please, read your Bible regularly. If you are having trouble knowing how to go about it, please, reach out to me through the messaging sections on this blog site. Or, read my book: Who Cares About the Bible?
Now, I did say that the Bible is not an “answer key” but instead, the way we get to know God. So, let’s assume we are getting to know God through the Bible. How do we know if we are being led by God in a particular situation? I have some thoughts. My thoughts are not hard and fast rules, but they are questions that can help us discern God’s will in various situations. Let’s pretend we are Jonathan’s armor bearer, and evaluate the guidance that Jonathan said he received from God:
1. Is it true of God’s nature? We can only answer this if we have begun to get to know God’s nature. We do this by – you guessed it! – reading the Bible. But the question is essentially this: Does this course of action seem consistent with what I know about God, as revealed to me through the Bible? So, Jonathan knew that God often uses the small and weak to defeat and shame the strong. Yes it is consistent with God’s nature.
2. Is it consistent with Biblical truth? Again, we need to know the Bible a little bit to answer that. But for instance, if you think you are being led to do something that the Bible says is a sin, that guidance is not from God. For Jonathan, the idea that God’s help is worth more than an army is consistent with scripture. There is nothing in scripture that labels Jonathan’s actions as sinful.
3. Is it true of the personal life of the person offering the guidance? Jonathan was bold and faithful. The guidance he got was consistent with his own character.
4. Do those close to that person testify to the integrity of that person’s life? The armor bearer knew Jonathan. He knew that Jonathan was someone who earnestly tried to follow God.
5. Is it wise? Jonathan didn’t start with a headlong attack. He set up a situation where he would be safe while he waited for God’s answer. He made room for God to tell him “no.” So, he showed wisdom.
6. Are there circumstances that confirm the word? Again in the case of Jonathan, he made it so that the guidance would be confirmed by the response of the Philistines. So he had confirming circumstances built right in to the guidance he received.
Maybe there is something else in this text for you. You might be in a difficult situation, with what seems like no way out. Although this text ends with victory for the Israelites, at the beginning of it, they were still just a step away from a national catastrophe. With Saul’s tiny army, there appeared to be no hope. So, for you right now, you might be facing a situation where things might appear hopeless. Perhaps you need to hear God speak through Jonathan: “nothing can stop the Lord from saving, whether by many, or by few.” Maybe you are tempted, like Saul, to believe deliverance cannot come until you have more – more people, more resources, more time, more money…whatever. But maybe the Lord is saying to you, “what you have is plenty. The point is not your resources, but mine.”
When Saul was in a tough spot, his insecurities, and need to be in control were revealed. Though there were consequences when he gave in to sin, those did not have to be fatal. When hard times reveal what is inside us, our hope is in Jesus, who crucified our old selves along with himself, and makes us a new creation.
To listen to the sermon, click the play button:
For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.
To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 1 Samuel Part 10
1 Samuel #10. 1 Samuel 13:1-15
During his first battle as leader of Israel, Saul defeated an enemy that dominated the Eastern tribes of Israel, as well as the Jordan valley. After that victory, the people finally accepted him officially as king. Saul conscripted 3,000 professional warriors and sent everyone else home. He let his son Jonathan command 1,000 of the soldiers.
Everything we read about Jonathan suggests he was an outstanding young man in every way. He took his 1,000 men and promptly handed the Philistines a stinging defeat at Geba. We will see as we go on that Jonathan had a warrior’s heart, and a trust in the Lord, and he wasn’t worried about stirring up Israel’s old enemy. He trusted that the Lord was with his people. The problem was, the rest of Israel – including his father – was worried. The news of Jonathan’s victory was carried throughout the land, but listen to how it was described:
“Saul has attacked the Philistine garrison, and Israel is now repulsive to the Philistines.” (1 Samuel 13:4)
So, even though Jonathan won the first round, the take-away was that they were now in big trouble. No one cared much for the victory. Instead, the feeling in Israel was that what Jonathan had done was basically the same as kicking a hornet’s nest, or shooting a grizzly bear with a BB gun. Jonathan inflicted damage, but he didn’t impair the power of the Philistines to make war. In addition, after almost a generation of peace with the Philistines (under the leadership of Samuel), this kicked off another round of war with them.
The Philistines began a major campaign, pushing up one of the valleys, into the hills and the heart of Israelite territory. Saul retreated, and they occupied a place near his former position.
At this point, we need some historical and geographical background. At the end of chapter 13, the writer (again who wrote this down about a generation or so later) explains something very significant.
19 There were no blacksmiths in the land of Israel in those days. The Philistines wouldn’t allow them for fear they would make swords and spears for the Hebrews. 20 So whenever the Israelites needed to sharpen their plowshares, picks, axes, or sickles, they had to take them to a Philistine blacksmith. 21 The charges were as follows: a quarter of an ounce of silver for sharpening a plowshare or a pick, and an eighth of an ounce for sharpening an ax or making the point of an ox goad. 22 So on the day of the battle none of the people of Israel had a sword or spear, except for Saul and Jonathan. (1 Samuel 13:19-22, NLT)
This information indicates that these events took place at the end of the Bronze Age, and the beginning of the Iron Age. Quite simply, at this point the Philistines had Iron-Age technology and the Israelites did not, and the Philistines were not interested in sharing it. This is one clue to why the Philistines were so feared by the Israelites, and why they were such a persistent military problem. They had iron weapons, and most of the Israelites did not. When we keep this in mind, this makes any Israelite victory over the Philistines something of a miracle. The Philistines lived on the south coast of Palestine, in areas that include modern-day Gaza. The Israelites mostly lived in the hills and mountains inland, and also on the other side of the Jordan river, north of the Dead Sea. The hills and small mountains helped keep the Philistines contained, in spite of their technological superiority.
As we look at the numbers of soldiers here, remember in part 8 we learned that the Hebrew word for “thousand” and for “chieftain,” or “well-armed professional soldier” are exactly the same. Remember also that chieftains were usually accompanied by peasant-militia troops without good weapons.
In addition, we have examples of parallel passages where extra zeroes have been added or dropped. 2 Samuel 10:18 records the defeat of 700 chariots; 1 Chronicles 19:18, speaking of exactly the same incident, writes 7,000. Generally, I would suspect the lower number to be correct. So if you ever read these numbers and think, “Gee, that sounds like a much bigger number than seems likely,” you can knock off a zero – and in some cases, three zeros – and still agree that the bible is faithful and reliable. The problem is simply in the translation.
In any case, we ought to understand that whatever the actual number recorded in verse 5 – 3,600 or 36,000 – for the times, it was a formidable professional fighting force that the Philistines sent into Israelite territory, along with a large number of peasant-militia troops. It was a big threat in two additional ways. First, up until this point, the Philistines had stayed mostly on the coastal plain. Technically, that was Israelite territory also, given to them by the Lord when they entered the promised land, however, the Israelites had never really lived there. But in the incident recorded in 1 Samuel 13, the Philistines were pushing inland, up into the hills and mountains that had been occupied by the Israelites for hundreds of years.
Secondly, the Philistine invasion recorded here nearly cut the nation of Israel in half. They pushed all the way to Michmash, which was just a few miles short of the Jordan River valley. If they moved all the way down to the Jordan, the largest tribe in Israel (Judah) would be cut off, along with the tribes of Benjamin and Dan, and roughly half of the territory of Israel would be isolated from the other tribes. In other words, the Philistines were about to take a gigantic, and possibly fatal bite out of Israel.
See the picture at left. The brown line shows the territory occupied by Israelite tribes, and the yellow area is the Philistines (this is a rough approximation, just to give you an idea of the danger they were in). Michmash is the yellow dot. The red dot next to the river is Gilgal, and the red dot closer to the Philistines is Gibeah.
Israel was just a few miles and one lost battle away from a huge national catastrophe.
It is interesting to note that Saul had originally held the position at Michmash, but retreated from the Philistines down into the Jordan valley. He gathered his army at Gilgal, a town in the Jordan river valley not far from the Philistines as the crow flies, but a very rough hike up or down the mountains by foot. The text doesn’t explain things clearly but apparently Samuel had sent a message to Saul, telling him to wait until he came, and then they would seek the Lord and worship him together before commencing the battle. In other words, they wanted God’s favor and help when they went out to fight. Samuel wanted Saul to rely on the Lord in this dire situation.
Now it is quite likely that Samuel’s home town was affected by this invasion – we do know that the Philistine forces came quite close to it. The position of the Philistines might have also forced Samuel to travel a considerable distance out of his way to get to Saul – remember, they had almost cut the nation in half. In any case, days passed, and Samuel did not show up. Saul’s army got restless and afraid. No doubt, many men were thinking of their families, wanting to prepare them for the disaster, or wondering if their homes had already been overrun by the enemy.
They were waiting to seek the Lord with Samuel the Prophet before they made a move. However, Samuel wasn’t there. Nothing was happening and the soldiers were worried about their families, and so they began to desert Saul and the army. So Saul took action. He decided to go ahead and lead the worship and offer the sacrifices himself. He made the burnt offering. This was an animal that was killed and completely burned up. No part of it was eaten – it was all “given” to the Lord through fire. It was used to seek God’s favor, to bring God’s forgiveness or to avert judgment. Just when Saul finished, Samuel finally made it to the camp.
Now, here is what troubles me. I think many Americans, if they didn’t read any further, would approve of what Saul did. People might say, “he’s a go-getter, a self-motivated leader.” They might think, “There’s a real leader – he’s losing men so he takes bold decisive action, he makes something happen.”
But Samuel didn’t see it that way, and apparently, neither did God.
13 And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the LORD your God, with which he commanded you. For then the LORD would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. 14 But now your kingdom shall not continue. The LORD has sought out a man after his own heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you.” 15 And Samuel arose and went up from Gilgal. (1Sam 13:13-15, ESV)
The prophet immediately identified that the problem was Saul’s heart. It wasn’t fixed on God. We can now see clearly that Saul was insecure. He was worried about the future of Israel, of course. He was worried about his own ability to keep the men with him and maintain an effective fighting force. He did not trust the Lord with these concerns. Instead, he trusted in his own action. He trusted in the offering ceremony, but not God himself. Clearly, Saul viewed the offerings as a tool. It was a way to keep his army together and energized; perhaps also a way to manipulate God into helping him. Saul did not offer the sacrifices to please the Lord, or because he was personally repentant or worshipful. If either of those had been the case, he would have waited for Samuel, who was the one who was supposed to do such things. Saul was not a priest, nor a prophet and was not supposed to lead that kind of worship. This is bad religion. He went through the motions of a religious ceremony, but it wasn’t about God at all. He was using religion for his own ends – to keep the men from deserting.
And of course, the fact that Saul couldn’t wait showed that he wasn’t willing to trust the Lord when he didn’t understand what was happening, or when the Lord wasn’t moving as fast as he wanted.
Now, there’s no doubt that Saul was in a tight spot. But the tense situation did not create the problem in his heart. It only revealed it. When you squeeze an orange, what comes out? Whatever is inside the orange of course, which is orange juice. When you are squeezed, what comes out? Whatever is inside you, of course. If you curse and rage when you are in a tough spot, that is because cursing and rage are inside you. Jesus said:
20“What comes out of a person — that defiles him. 21 For from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, 22 adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, promiscuity, stinginess, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within and defile a person.” (Mark 7:7-23)
45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. (Luke 6:45)
When Saul was squeezed by his circumstances, he did not put his faith steadfastly in the Lord. He refused to wait on God or on other people. His situation was not easy. But it didn’t cause his heart-problem – it just revealed it. He let his insecurity rule him, and he chose to act, rather than depend on the Lord. When Saul was squeezed, it was fear that came out, and a need to be in control. He put his trust in the number of men he had, rather than the Lord. It was more important to him to keep as many men as possible than it was to seek God and his favor.
Saul failed in this incident, and revealed what was truly in his heart. However, the Lord did not give up on him, and with the Lord’s help, Saul did many more good things, as we will see. In fact we will see God continually trying to reach Saul throughout his life. Samuel’s words were supposed to be a kind of prophetic warning. If we read carefully, we see that God wasn’t even saying Saul shouldn’t be the king. It was something like this: “Unless your heart changes, your dynasty won’t continue. The Lord will find someone whose heart is tender toward God. If yours doesn’t change it will have to be someone else.” We should understand that God was not taking away the kingship of Saul, but saying instead that because of Saul’s sin, he could not be the founder of a dynasty. The kingship would pass to a different family.
This is all about trusting God when things don’t look good – maybe things look disastrous. If you get squeezed, what do you think will come out? What is in the treasure-store of your heart?
What if it isn’t good? What if, like Saul, you have insecurity hiding there? What if there is rage or hatred or jealousy or selfishness, or other ugly things? I think Saul had the opportunity to repent. Again, I think Samuel’s words were more of a prophetic warning than an absolute statement of judgment. However, even if we take it as a settled judgment, the punishment is not that Saul himself could not return to the Lord, or even that he himself could no longer be king. It was that none of his sons would be king after him. This means that there was still hope for Saul, and there is still hope for all of us.
When he was tempted, Saul could have turned to the Lord, confessed his weakness, and put his trust in the Lord. I think that is what we need to do when we are squeezed, and we see there is a problem in our hearts.
14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:14-21, ESV)
We should be sad when we discover bad things in our heart, but that is not the final word. We need to remember that through Jesus, our heart problem has been solved. Our old self, with all its insecurities, jealousies and lusts, has been killed with Jesus on the cross. Through Jesus, our spirit has already been renewed, and we wait with passionate hope for the day when that renewal is completed in our soul and body.
There might also be an application here for you if you are faced with a difficult situation. Perhaps you feel a lot of pressure just to act, to do something, to make something happen. Sometimes the Lord does lead us to do that. We’ll see that with Jonathan next time. But if the Lord is calling you to wait, or if your action would be from fear or insecurity, maybe you need to sit still and wait for God to show up.
The things that God did for his people in the past are supposed to be considered part of his faithfulness to us in the present. What God did for previous generations, he also did for us. God’s goodness to others is part of his goodness to us, because we belong to his people. His faithfulness does not end when we make mistakes. He walks with us even when we choose the wrong path, and redeems us in our mistakes, if we will let him.
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1 Samuel # 9. God’s faithfulness to us at all times. 1 Samuel 12:1-25
Think for a moment about some decision you made, or action you took that you now know was a mistake. What would you change today, if you could? How would your life be different?
We all know that you can’t go back and unsay those cruel words, or un-make that decision that led you to where you are today. I’m not going to pretend that I’ve found a way to do that. But I do think that through 1 Samuel chapter 12, God is offering grace even after we have stepped out on the wrong road. It isn’t grace to go back. It is grace to go on.
In first Samuel chapter 8, the people asked God, through Samuel, to give them a king. This was a rejection of God’s plan for them as a nation. It was a choice to exchange the freedom and protection they could have had in following the Lord for the false-security of a king who would take care of them, but also rule over them. Samuel, in his wisdom, knew it was a mistake. He talked to God about it, who affirmed Samuel’s instinct that it was a mistake. But the people were determined.
Not only did they want a king, they wanted a certain kind of king. Their requirements were also a mistake. But the people were determined. The Lord allowed them to choose their own way. They did, and their choice was a major mistake. Even so, God let them go ahead with it, and helped them to find a king. The man who met their specifications was Saul, a big impressive looking fellow who was also insecure and spiritually insensitive and ignorant.
Even so, the Lord began to use Saul right away. In choosing him, the Lord removed an old shame from many thousands of people, and set up Israel with a magnificent big champion to match a Philistine giant whom no one yet knew about.
God chose Saul through the prophet Samuel. First Samuel anointed Saul in private. Later he was chosen by God in a public assembly of the leaders of Israel. Even so, nothing really happened. After the events we looked at last time – after a great military victory – the people finally made Saul an honest king.
15 So all the people went to Gilgal, and there in the LORD’s presence they made Saul king. There they sacrificed fellowship offerings in the LORD’s presence, and Saul and all the men of Israel greatly rejoiced. 1 Sam 11:15 (HCSB)
So you see, even their approach to the king was not one of faith in the Lord and his choice. They waited until Saul gave them something of what they were looking for – military victory – before they fully accepted God’s help in choosing the king.
After it was finally all official, Samuel stood before the people and made a speech. That speech is the text of 1 Samuel chapter 12.
In the first place (12:1-5), Samuel wanted to make sure his conscience was clear. He also wanted to draw a contrast between his own actions, and the rights of a king. Samuel has never taken anything that wasn’t his. Yet he had warned the people in 8:10-18 that the King would have the right to take many things from the people in taxes to run his household and the kingdom. The people affirmed that Samuel had been a good and fair leader. There is an unspoken implication to this part of Samuel’s speech “So – in me, God gave you a good and fair leader who listened to him and did right. But you wanted a king!”
Next, Samuel reminded them of God’s faithfulness. The Lord led them out of Egypt as a great nation – but without a king. They had Moses, a prophet, and Aaron, a priest, but no king. And the Lord cared for them and provided for them. Although Samuel doesn’t mention this explicitly, the troubles the people had in the wilderness during the exodus were not due to lack of a king, but rather to disobedience to the Lord.
During the time of the Judges, the people had troubles again. But Samuel points out two things. First, the trouble was their own doing, not because they lacked a king. It came because they quit following the Lord. Second, when they repented and cried out for God’s help, he was gracious and delivered them.
11 So the LORD sent Jerubbaal, Barak, Jephthah, and Samuel. He rescued you from the power of the enemies around you, and you lived securely.
There is something else about part of Samuel’s speech that is striking: most of the incidents he described of God’s goodness to the people happened to previous generations of Israelites, not to the people with whom he was speaking. However, he speaks as if God had done all this for the present generation. This is something important that Moses taught the people of Israel long before. Every generation of Israelites was called to remember the great acts of God in the past, and to live like God had done those things for themselves, in this present generation. The people of God are heirs to all that God has done in the past. God’s work in the past should be considered a sign of his faithfulness in the present.
We live in a highly individualized society, and on top of that, our culture is obsessed with the future, and new things. But there are other ways to live, other ways to view the world. God’s people in ancient times were much more communal, and much more in touch with the past. If God did something for past generations, it was counted very much as if he had done it for the present generation. If God did something for me, he did it for his people. If he did it for his people he did it for me.
I think we should learn from this way of looking at the world. I find that I easily forget the things God has done in the past even in my own life. I hardly even consider things he has done for others, or what he did for previous generations of his people. But if we start to see ourselves as part of the intergenerational community of God’s people, then his faithfulness to us becomes overwhelmingly apparent. Twenty years ago God healed my friend Adam from a broken back. The healing was documented by before and after x-rays. A few years ago, he healed my friend Doug from twisted intestines – again documented before and after by CT scan. But those healings weren’t just for Adam and Doug – they were for me, for all of us in the community of faith. And they weren’t just for those moments in the past – they were for us now, and for future generations. I could easily name a dozen other amazing things God has done for me, and for people I know. And then add in God’s graciousness to Christians I don’t even know, and then to his people of previous generations, and suddenly, God’s grace and faithfulness become overwhelming. I think it would be very helpful if we began to consider God’s faithfulness to his people as a whole, including his faithfulness to previous generations. The writer of Hebrews encourages us to do exactly that. After writing about God’s mighty acts for his people in the past, he says this:
1 Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, 2 keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that lay before Him endured a cross and despised the shame and has sat down at the right hand of God’s throne. (Hebrews 12:1-2, HCSB)
There is a great cloud of witnesses to God’s faithfulness to his people. We belong to God’s people. His goodness to them is also his goodness to us. Everything God did in the past, he did for us, the people of God.
4 For whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that we may have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from the Scriptures. (Romans 15:4, HCSB)
Let that sink in, and let it lead us to lay aside all heaviness and sin, and run our race with perseverance, knowing that we too, are a part of that group of witnesses.
Back to Samuel’s speech. The overall point Samuel is making is that when they followed the Lord faithfully, he delivered his people, protected them, and they lived in peace and security. All this took place without a human king. The Lord was their king. Samuel is saying – look, when you were faithful to God, the old way worked just fine. God did so much for you. Even so, you are ignoring everything he did for you. You are claiming it just isn’t working out, when the reason it isn’t working out is your own stubbornness, your own turning away from God.
After the people heard this, they recognized that Samuel was right. They felt bad about what they had done, and they were afraid. I would bet that no one reading this – even you folks who live outside the United States – has asked God to give you a king. But have you asked him for something that was a mistake? Have you ever determined to go ahead your own way, and later realized it was a mistake – maybe even a huge error of judgment?
1 Samuel 12 gives a picture of how God deals with us in those kinds of situations. I always want to go back and do it over, only correctly this time. I want to have my mistakes undone. But God doesn’t work that way.
Sometimes, I enjoy playing computer games. One of the great things about computer games, is that you can mess up, you can even die – and it doesn’t matter. You just start the game over from the last point at which you saved it. I have often thought – and maybe you have too – wouldn’t it be cool if life was like a computer game? If you blow it, you just get a “do-over.” If you make a bad choice, you go back to that point and make a right choice now.
But there is something else about computer games. They are fun, but they are also meaningless. I don’t mean that it is evil or wrong to play them. But the choices you make within a computer game are meaningless. Death in a computer game is meaningless in real life. Life in a computer game is meaningless. We need to understand something here: choices without consequences have no meaning.
There is a famous old story about an ordinary young man who falls in love with a princess, and she loves him back. The father of the princess, the king, is not pleased. He decrees that the young man be placed in front of two doors, with a choice to open one or the other. Behind one of the doors is a beautiful maiden, however, not his beloved princess. If he chooses her door, he will be married to her immediately and they will be exiled to another kingdom. Behind the other door is an angry, hungry tiger which will surely kill him. He doesn’t know which door holds the lady and which holds the tiger. However, the princess, the young man’s lover, knows the secret of the doors. If she tells him to open the tiger-door, he will be killed in agony. But if she tells him to open the lady-door, he will be married to the beautiful maiden behind that one, and the princess who loves him will be left alone. She signals him secretly to open one of the doors. Here’s the question: which door did she tell him to open?
This story has endured for over a hundred years, in part because there is an agony in knowing that the choices matter. However, as a thought experiment, change the story a little. Suppose that no matter which door he chose, the tiger would be there. Or, no matter which door he chose, he would get the princess herself and they would live happily ever after. The story is no longer compelling if the choices do not result in some consequence.
Imagine I held in one hand a bag containing a candy bar, and in the other hand, a bag containing a piece of scrap wood that was good for nothing. If you think you might have a shot at the candy bar, it would be fun to try and make the right choice. If you knew that no matter what you chose, I would give you the wood, you wouldn’t bother even playing. If you knew that no matter what you did, I would give you the candy bar, you might be happy about the candy, but you would probably think going through the motion of choosing is pretty pointless and stupid – in fact, meaningless.
So we see that with the Israelites, the Lord gave them their free and meaningful choice. If He undid their choice, it would mean their choices would have no consequences, and therefore no meaning, and therefore they would not actually have free choice. The same is true of our choices. So the Lord doesn’t undo them.
What the Lord did do for the Israelites was promise to walk with them through the consequences they brought on themselves. He works even with their wrong choices, and accomplishes his purposes in spite of them. So, Samuel encourages them to walk with the Lord NOW.
20 Samuel replied, “Don’t be afraid. Even though you have committed all this evil, don’t turn away from following the LORD. Instead, worship the LORD with all your heart. 21 Don’t turn away to follow worthless things that can’t profit or deliver you; they are worthless. 22 The LORD will not abandon His people, because of His great name and because He has determined to make you His own people.
23 “As for me, I vow that I will not sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you. I will teach you the good and right way. 24 Above all, fear the LORD and worship Him faithfully with all your heart; consider the great things He has done for you. 25 However, if you continue to do what is evil, both you and your king will be swept away.” (1 Samuel 12:20-25)
It was not God’s plan for Israel to be led by a king. Once they made that choice they had some difficult consequences to follow, as we will see. But even so, God worked through that mistake. In fact he worked through it in a mighty and amazing way. Eventually he used the monarchy of mistake as a way to bring his salvation to the entire world; Jesus, in his human ancestry, was descended from the kings of Israel.
Maybe it was a mistake for you to take the job you have right now. Perhaps the Lord was calling you to something else, but you just didn’t have the faith to take the risk. OK, so you messed up. But don’t turn away from following the Lord. He can do great things through this. Just be sure to let him.
Maybe you married the wrong person. People think this all the time. They think that somehow they missed out on their real soul mate, and now their entire marriage was a mistake. Fine, what if it was? God can and will work through this marriage, if you let him. Even now, don’t turn away from following the Lord. Don’t follow worthless things. God will redeem your mistake and make it beautiful, if you allow him to.
I’m not only talking about honest mistakes, either. The people of Israel knew that God didn’t want them to have a human king. They did it anyway. In the same way, sometimes we deliberately make a sinful choice. God can redeem even those choices; maybe especially those choices.
God is so good. He wants our lives to have meaning, so he allows our choices to be free and real. And yet, even when we make the wrong choice, if we turn back to him, he can work through any circumstance we might create for ourselves, and make good come out of it.
Once again I’m reminded of Romans 8:28:
28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28, HCSB)
With things happening in Israel right now, there are a lot of Christians talking about the End Times. This happens to some degree every time there is a conflict in Israel, and I’d like to share some of my thoughts about this, to try and provide some guidance. Rather than my normal sermon format, I’m attaching some notes below that are a little bit rough still, along with an audio file with some of my thoughts.
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HOW SHOULD WE THINK ABOUT THE END TIMES?
I want to make something really clear: I trust the scripture absolutely. But with regard to the end times, I am not nearly so certain about my own understanding of it, my own interpretations of it. I think that kind of humility about our own interpretations is important when we talk about things like the end Times. So hear me say it clearly: I could be mistaken. Please consider the possibility that other viewpoints might also be mistaken.
It is good and natural to desire the return of Jesus. His return is the substance of our hope. When he returns, it means that the new creation will soon appear, and we will be freed from sin, sorrow and death. All Christians ought to desire it. If we don’t eagerly want Jesus to return, it might even be a symptom of a spiritual problem. Perhaps we don’t really believe in it.
However, it seems to me that some people misdirect their desire for the return of Jesus. They spend much of their energy trying to figure out when it might happen. It becomes an exciting puzzle that they are trying to solve. It’s understandable. When you want something badly, you want to know that it might happen soon. It’s hard to not want to figure out when you’ll get it.
However, Jesus did not tell us to eagerly desire to solve the puzzle of when he would return. In fact, he said almost the opposite. He said no one will know. Several times, and in several ways, he told us that we cannot solve this puzzle. He never encouraged us to try.
Instead, Jesus tells us to direct our desire for his return in two ways:
Let it feed our hope
Let the fact that we won’t know the day of his return lead us to live faithfully ready at all times. The parables of the ten bridesmaids and the talents are making exactly that point: Every day, live in such a way that you are ready for him to return.
44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. 45 “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? 46 Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. 47 Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. 48 But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ 49 and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, 50 the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know 51 and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 24:44-51, ESV)
At the conclusion to the parable of the ten bridesmaids, which Jesus told as part of his teaching on the End Times, he said:
3 Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. (Matthew 25:13, ESV)
Likewise the parable of the ten talents, and the sheep and goats are about being ready for Jesus’ return by living faithfully at all times
WHAT IS THE RAPTURE?
There are a few Bible verses that seem to say that when Jesus returns, those believers who are still alive will not have to die, but they will be brought into his presence and transformed. Sometimes this is described as being caught up into the air. This is often called the rapture.
Some Christians think that this “rapture,” this event of being taken up in the air to be with Jesus, will occur before Jesus actually returns. They think that suddenly all the Christians alive at that time will either vanish, or perhaps be visibly lifted up in the sky. They will go to be with Jesus, leaving behind those who do not trust Jesus. After that, they say, there will be seven years of great trouble and hardship on earth (sometimes called “the Great Tribulation”), and only then will Jesus actually return. In theology, we call this idea “the pre-tribulation rapture,” or the “pre-trib rapture,” for short (we theologians are a cool bunch, with our slang and all).
This idea – the pre-trib rapture (which most people just call “the rapture”) – is the main thing that most people have heard about the end times. Most people think it is gospel truth. You might be one of them. Probably, everyone you know thinks this way. Pastors and other people you trust have told you this is what the Bible teaches. Maybe you’ve seen the Left Behind movies, or read the books. It might feel like you know this is true. I have met people who were deeply blessed by the Left Behind materials, and I’m grateful that God used them in that way. I don’t agree with everything in them, but I recognize that they are the work of dear fellow-Christians.
So, I understand that the “pre-trib rapture” is a dearly held belief. I realize that it will upset a lot of people to hear anything different. Before I go any further, let me ask you this: Do you really want to know what the Bible teaches?
Now, I don’t mind if you disagree with me, especially if you have really good reasons from the Bible to do so. I certainly could be wrong. In fact, I will be overjoyed if it turns out I am wrong. So, I’m happy to continue in fellowship with anyone who disagrees with me on this. I don’t think this issue is a good reason for Christians to separate from one another.
If I don’t think this issue is big enough to make us separate from other Christians why am I teaching on it at all?
In the first place, consider this: If you believe Jesus will take you away before things get really bad, and then things do get really bad, and you’re still here, what will you think? You might think you were never a real Christian at all, and experience terrible doubts about your salvation. Perhaps you might even believe you are destined for hell. Or you might think none of it was true in the first place, and lose your faith altogether.
On the other hand, if you believe, like me, that some Christians will have to go through the great tribulation, and then you get raptured away instead, where is the down side? As I said, I would be overjoyed to find myself raptured before the great tribulation.
In other words, I think it is far better to be prepared to suffer for the sake of Christ. As it happens, there are many, many verses in the Bible that tell us we should be prepared to suffer as followers of Jesus, whether or not we experience the Great Tribulation of the end times. So, on the whole, if we are going to be wrong about the rapture, I think it’s better to be wrong by believing as I do, and be ready, than wrong the other way, and be unprepared for terrible suffering. One of the main points of Jesus’ teaching on the end times is that we should be ready, living faithfully at all times, because we won’t expect it when he shows up.
Secondly, I am teaching on this because I want to share what I believe the Bible actually says about the issue. It’s OK to disagree, and it’s also OK to have a firm opinion, while we deal with our disagreements in love and grace.
All right, let’s dive in.
In the first place, this teaching about a pre-tribulation rapture – a rapture that occurs some time before Jesus returns – was not common at all until the mid 1800s. In other words, for about seventeen-hundred years, hardly any Christians thought that the bible taught this. This is actually quite important. To say that the pre-trib rapture is correct, you must assume that most of Christians throughout most of history just absolutely missed it. You need to believe that only after 1700 years did some people get smart enough to see what the bible really teaches about the end times. It also means that the Holy Spirit allowed virtually all of God’s people to be in error for all of that time. That’s quite an idea. It could make you question whether we can trust anything we think we know about the Bible, because maybe Christians have got everything wrong all this time.
Even the word rapture doesn’t exactly come from the Bible. It is an English translation of a Latin translation of a Greek word from the New Testament. In other words, “rapture” is a translation of a translation. It is not the best translation directly from the Greek. I’ll keep using this word, however, since everyone knows what I’m talking about when I say it.
Most pre-tribulation rapture people have detailed ideas about the end times, and they are pretty confident that they know how it goes. They take parts of Daniel, and of Zechariah, little pieces of the gospels, one two pieces of the letters of Peter and Paul, and put it all together with the book of Revelation. They do not take these verses in context. They don’t consider the books as a whole. Instead they take verses out of the context in which they were written, and add them to other verses taken out of context, and then come up with their detailed plan for how the end times are supposed to go. They also often ignore the type of genre in which those verses are written, and take many things literally when some of them were probably intended to be metaphors.
That is the part that I believe is a bad way to study the Bible. If we used the Bible like this for other subjects, we could make it say all sorts of crazy things. In fact, when people start cults based on Christianity, this is how they treat the Bible, and those cults often start with strange new teachings about the end times.
Let’s look at two important “rapture” verses:
51 But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! 52 It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. 53 For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies. (1 Corinthians 15:51-53)
It says here that first, those who have died will be raised to life, and then the living will be transformed. In other words, the rapture happens after the resurrection.
You might argue that the verse above is not about the rapture, because it only talks about the transformation of our bodies, but not about being caught up in the air. So then, read this:
13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)
When it says “those who are asleep” it means “those who have died.” Just as these days we use “passed away” as a euphemism for dead, so in those days, the expression was “fallen asleep.”
So this is all quite clear. First, the Lord will descend with great fanfare from heaven. Then the dead will rise. Then, those who trust Jesus and are still alive will be “raptured,” along with those who have just been resurrected. Again, the resurrection of the dead will occur before the rapture. It happens at the moment that Jesus himself is descending from heaven with a loud cry and trumpet blast. In other words, it happens while the whole world witnesses the return of Jesus.
Jesus also makes it clear in Matthew, that the rapture happens at the moment of his return:
29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. (Matthew 24:29-31)
It’s actually quite straightforward: The elect (those who trust in Jesus) will not be gathered up (raptured) until:
a) After a time of tribulation (verse 29) and
b) The sun and moon are darkened
c) The dead are resurrected
d) Jesus appears in the clouds, visible to all people in all his power and glory.
In other words, as we have already seen, the rapture happens at the same moment that Jesus returns to earth in power and glory.
A DETAILED LOOK AT ONE BIBLE TEXT (MATTHEW 24:3-44)
(Mark and Luke have very similar passages)
Here is the most clear and complete teaching about the end times given by Jesus while he was still on earth:
3 As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” 4 And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. 5 For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. 6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
So, in the first place, we need to guard against being deceived. Many people will claim the end is about to come, but we should not be alarmed, or led astray. Wars, natural disasters and so on are only the beginning of the birth pains. They are not the end. If someone says “This war in Israel means the end is near,” they are not paying attention to what Jesus actually says. He says wars will happen, but they do not mean the end has come.
Some people may not be aware of it, but Israel has been involved in many wars and military actions since it became a modern nation in 1947. The website Jewishvirtuallibrary.org documents twenty-two major military actions during that time. I’m not judging Israel for it – I believe they’ve been attacked every single time, and they’ve defended themselves, as they certainly have a right to do. However, every time there is a conflict in Israel, many Christians claim that the return of Jesus is imminent. The people claiming that have been wrong every time – twenty-two times – so far. Why do we still pay attention to them?
Let’s continue with the words of Jesus: 9 “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. 10 And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. 11 And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Jesus says that we will experience tribulation before the end comes. Many awful things will happen while disciples of Jesus are still alive in the world. It does not say that we will be “raptured out” before bad troubles begin. It does not say we will be raptured out before the wars and natural disasters. Instead, it calls us to endure until the end. It also says the gospel must be proclaimed to all ethnic peoples (that’s the Greek meaning for “nations”) before the end will come. We can’t do that if we are raptured away. There is no need to “endure until the end” if we will be raptured away.
15 “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, 18 and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. 19 And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! 20 Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. 22 And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.
Most Biblical prophecies contain layers. For instance Isaiah prophesied about the return of the Jewish exiles to Jerusalem after they were in Babylon. This happened in about 517 BC. Mixed and jumbled with those same prophecies are things about the first time Jesus came into the world, and also (we think) about the end of the world, when he will return.
Joel 2:28-32 is a prophecy that was fulfilled by the coming of the Holy Spirit on all who trust Jesus (Acts 2:14-21). However, also jumbled in with Joel 2 are prophecies about the return of the Jewish people from exile in Babylon that was fulfilled in about 517 BC, and, as far as we can tell, prophecies about the very end of the world.
So, in Matthew 24:15-22, Jesus is probably talking about several things. First, it is almost certainly a prophecy about the Jewish-Roman war of 70 AD (roughly forty years after Jesus). The temple was desecrated at that time, and it was probably the most horrible slaughter in world history until the first world war. In fact, Jesus’ prophecies here are so right on about that war that it makes unbelieving scholars think the gospels could not have been written until after 70 AD., because they don’t believe Jesus could have predicted the future so accurately.
Part of this prophecy may also be about the end of the world and the return of Jesus.
Jesus says the days of tribulation will be cut short “for the sake of the elect.” The “elect” are those who belong to Jesus through faith. He does not say the elect will be “raptured out” before those days. Instead he says the suffering won’t last as long for everyone, for the sake of the elect.
Some people might say that “the elect” means the Jewish people, whom, they say, will remain behind after the rapture. However, in the New Testament, the Greek word “elect” is never used to refer specifically to the Jews or people of Israel. It is always used of all those who trust in Jesus, whether Jews or Gentiles.
23 Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. 24 For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you beforehand. 26 So, if they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the wilderness,’ do not go out. If they say, ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. 27 For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 28 Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.
Here we see again a warning against being deceived about all this. He says that false prophets and false miracles will be used to try and deceive the elect. That means the elect (in other words, believers) will still be in this world.
He also says that when Jesus returns, no one will miss it. It will be obvious.
29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
All of this happens after “the tribulation of those days.” Once again, we see that the return of Jesus will be completely obvious. Everyone will see it and know it. As Jesus is returning in power and glory – after the tribulation, after the sun goes dark – he will send his angels to gather the elect – those who belong to God through faith. This is the “rapture,” and it doesn’t happen until the very end, until everyone on earth sees Jesus returning.
32 “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. 33 So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 34 Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.
The lesson of the fig tree is that we can recognize the signs that his return might be likely. The generation that Jesus spoke to didn’t pass away before the fulfillment of his prophecies about the Jewish-Roman war.
Again, however, NO ONE KNOWS WHEN JESUS WILL RETURN, NOT EVEN JESUS KNEW WHILE HE WAS ON EARTH.
37 For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, 39 and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. 42 Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Verses 40-41 are often used as “proof” of the pre-trib rapture. However, such a thing is not at all clear from these verses alone. It might be referring to the rapture at the moment Jesus returns, but it is certainly not proof that for those who aren’t raptured, life will continue on normally for a while.
Jesus says it will be like the days of Noah, which is to say, life was going on as normal, and then suddenly the flood came and destroyed the world. So, life will be going on as normal, and then suddenly Jesus will return. The main point here is obviously that the end will come as a surprise.
Jesus compares it to Noah’s flood. Think about the days of the flood. It wasn’t that the flood came, and some were saved from it, while others continued on with their daily lives for seven more years. No, the flood came suddenly, and then it was too late to get on the ark. Those who trusted God’s word through Noah were saved. Those who didn’t were lost in a moment.
So, if “one was taken…etc.” does refer to the rapture, there is no reason it should not mean that one is taken up to be with Jesus as he returns for the final judgement, while the other is left to face that judgment alone, since he doesn’t belong to Jesus. There is nothing here that suggests that some people are taken up to heaven seven years before Jesus returns.
Once again, however, the main point for us is not about when the rapture, and the return of Jesus will happen. The main thing is for us to be living faithfully, ready, if necessary, to suffer for the sake of Jesus, and ready at all times for him to return. Let’s dedicate our energy and effort to that, more than to trying figure out something that we already know ahead of time we will be unable to discover.
Once again, I hold my own interpretations fairly loosely. I could be wrong about some of this, and I will be delighted if I am wrong about when the rapture happens. But I do think it’s important to consider the perspective I offer here, because it often does not get much of a hearing in Christian circles.
Saul struggled with insecurity, but God used him even so. A town that was still shamed and forgotten received honor and deliverance from God, through king Saul.
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1 Samuel #8. 1 Samuel 10:24 – 11:15
I want to reiterate something that happened at the end of chapter 10, and then we’ll move on to chapter 11. Remember, Samuel anointed Saul as king of Israel when it was just the two of them in private. After being anointed king, Saul went home. As he journeyed back, his anointing was confirmed by several signs that Samuel had prophesied to him before hand.
Even so, Saul did not tell anyone that Samuel had anointed him king. At first glance this looks like it could be humility, and maybe it was. Perhaps he was waiting for God to confirm it before he said anything. And yet – God already did confirm it, through the signs that Samuel prophesied, which came true. So, maybe Saul’s silence about being made king was something else altogether: insecurity.
After some time, Samuel gathered the people together, and they asked the Lord to choose a king by lots. Saul was chosen. This was another powerful confirmation of Saul’s calling, this time in public, for all to see. But Saul hid among the baggage while it was happening. Again, this could be either humility, or insecurity. Actually, I think it is a little bit of both. When we read the texts carefully, we can see that Saul is a very complex, very real person. This is one way the Bible is very different from ancient myths and legends. In other ancient legends (as in the Epic of Gilgamesh, for example) people are portrayed more simplistically. They are either strong or weak, honorable, or shameful. But in the Bible, we find that the people and situations it describes are often complicated – like people are in real life. This helps to give me confidence that what we read in the Bible is real history. It is true.
So, I suspect that Saul had a lot of insecurity, but that he was also capable of genuine humility. I want to point out that his insecurity seems to be because he had trouble believing what God has said. Through Samuel, God told him he would be king. Through the signs, he confirmed it. Through the choices by lot, God confirmed it again. But I suspect, for the reasons I shared last week, that Saul had never really been a man of faith. He did not know God, and had not ever been very interested in Him. It’s hard to believe what God says if you don’t really know God. It’s hard to trust someone you don’t know. If you go your whole life ignoring God, then it is hard to believe it when someone tells you that God has a purpose for your life.
Listen to what happened next:
25 Then Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship, and he wrote them in a book and laid it up before the LORD. Then Samuel sent all the people away, each one to his home. 26 Saul also went to his home at Gibeah, and with him went men of valor whose hearts God had touched. 27 But some worthless fellows said, “How can this man save us?” And they despised him and brought him no present. But he held his peace. (1 Samuel 10:25-27)
Just put yourself in Saul’s situation for a minute. You have just been made king – twice. It has been confirmed by lot and by prophesied signs that came true. A future with possibilities you never dreamed of is opening up in front of you. Everyone shakes your hand and slaps you on the back, and congratulates you…and then they all go home. You look around. It’s time for you to go home also. There’s nothing else to do. I can’t help thinking that this was a major let down for Saul. So he’s king. Big whoop. Now he’s got to go back and plow his fields.
A few warriors felt called to stick with the new king and serve him. The Lord touched them and they believed in him and stuck with him. But there were at least an equal number of people who didn’t believe in him at all, and mocked him and his calling. I think all of this must have been disappointing. It probably fed into his insecurity.
Now, I want to leave Saul for a moment and go back and set the stage for what happened next. I spoke about this a little bit last time, but I want to go into more detail now. Roughly two hundred years before Saul’s lifetime, the residents of a town called Gibeah, in the tribe of Benjamin, had committed an atrocity. Rather than welcome a traveling priest, they had attempted to abuse and rape him. When they were prevented from this they raped and killed his concubine instead. In those days a concubine was considered a wife.
The priest took the dead body of his wife, and cut it up, and sent the pieces to the twelve tribes of Israel as a graphic way of letting the whole nation know what had taken place in Gibeah. Eleven of the tribes assembled, but the tribe of Benjamin did not come, even though Gibeah was in their own territory, and the atrocity had happened on “their turf,” so to speak. The other tribes demanded that the tribe of Benjamin deliver the residents of Gibeah to the rest of the nation so that justice could be done. The whole tribe of Benjamin refused, and they actually fought a war with the other tribes rather than punish the evil-doers. Naturally, there was a great deal of outrage against the tribe of Benjamin. The other Israelites destroyed almost the entire tribe. The only survivors were six hundred Benjamite warriors who escaped into the hills. Everyone else – including women and children, had been killed.
In their rage, the other tribes had sworn an oath to not allow their daughters to marry any Benjamite. That meant that within a few years, there would be no more tribe of Benjamin. But after the war, the Israelites began to mourn for the loss of the twelfth tribe. They looked for a way to get wives for the few remaining men of Benjamin without violating their oaths, so that the tribe could be eventually restored. They found that one city in Israel had refused to go to war along with the other people – the city of Jabesh-Gilead, on the other side of the Jordan river Valley. In effect, Jabesh-Gilead had also been defending the evildoers, at least passively, by refusing to fight for justice. So the rest of the Israelites took all of the unmarried women in that city, and gave them to the Benjamites to be their wives. If this sounds brutal and awful, it is. The Bible does not say that what they did in this situation was good and right. It just tells us what actually happened. And we know from historical studies that those kinds of thing certainly did happen all throughout the region in those days.
Last week I explained that I think the Lord’s choice of Saul was in part to remove the shame of the tribe of Benjamin. Not only was Saul from Benjamin, but he was actually from the town of Gibeah – the very town that had committed such shameful acts. The Lord was saying to them, “You are no longer under a cloud of shame. You are not second-class in my eyes. Your forgiveness is complete.”
But there was another group that was still under a cloud of shame for that incident – the city of Jabesh-Gilead. They too, had defended the evil act of Benjamin, even if only passively. When Saul was made king, the shame of Benjamin and of Gibeah was finally removed. But it appeared that Jabesh-Gilead was forgotten by God in all this. Their sin had not been as great, but they had suffered too, and they still lived under a cloud of shame. God was finally noticing Benjamin and Gibeah, but no one seemed to remember poor Jabesh-Gilead.
Now, after Saul was chosen as king, things got even worse for Jabesh-Gilead. The foreign nation of Ammon came up to besiege the city. You can almost see the low self-esteem born of 200 years of shame. They didn’t even pretend they had the courage to fight, and they were pretty sure none of the other Israelites would be interested in coming to their aid. They started negotiating a surrender right away, ready to give up their freedom in order to keep their lives. As often happens when a bully encounters someone with a poor sense of self-worth, the bully senses weakness, and begins to pile it on. Surrender wasn’t good enough for the Ammonites. They wanted to rub the faces of their enemies in it. They demanded that all the men have their right eyes gouged out, as one of the conditions of surrender.
The next exchange of messages sounds strange to us who are used to modern warfare. The city of Jabesh-Gilead asked for seven days to see if anyone would help them. The strange thing is that the Ammonites granted them the time. But there are three reasons for this. First, if the Ammonites didn’t grant the time they would end up having to fight for sure, but if they waited, there was still a chance of a bloodless victory. Second, the Ammonites probably felt that the other Israelite tribes were too disorganized to do anything within seven days anyway. Third, both the Ammonites and the people of Jabesh-Gilead seemed doubtful that anyone would help them. They were the black sheep of the family. Of any town in Israel, they were the least likely to be helped.
Their messengers went all over Israel. When the messengers got to Gibeah, Saul’s home town, no one thought to go get the king. In fact, his royal majesty was plowing a field at that moment. He just happened to come to town as the people were weeping over the fate of Jabesh-Gilead.
6 And the Spirit of God rushed upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled. 7 He took a yoke of oxen and cut them in pieces and sent them throughout all the territory of Israel by the hand of messengers, saying, “Whoever does not come out after Saul and Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen!” Then the dread of the LORD fell upon the people, and they came out as one man. (1 Samuel 11:6)
Years ago my wife Kari did an exhaustive study on the Holy Spirit. She has pointed out to me many times that when the Holy Spirit comes on people in the Old Testament, it often seems to be almost an external thing, and God seems to use people whether or not they are close to him or in tune with him. For instance, the hero Samson was clearly ignorant of God, and lived a sinful life – and yet God used him. After Jesus came, however, the Holy Spirit stopped working in that external way, and now he is connected with all who believe in Jesus through a spirit-to-spirit connection. Now the spirit is within everyone who trusts Jesus, and he flows through us and does his work from the inside out.
Saul was living in those Old Testament times, however, and in spite of his deficiencies, God used him. The Spirit came on him, and he acted. Even as God was using him, however, we can see his insecurity. First, he called the people not only in his own name, but also the name of Samuel, as if he was afraid they wouldn’t come for the summons of the king alone.
The next thing he did was somewhat typical of ancient Middle Eastern leaders, except with a few surprising differences. In those days, when people swore allegiance to a king or leader, that leader would confiscate someone’s cow or goat, and cause it to be cut in pieces. Then the leader would declare something like this: “Unless you fulfill your oaths of loyalty to me, I will come and cut you into pieces, just as this animal has been cut to pieces.”
But Saul changed the ceremony. First, he didn’t confiscate anyone else’s oxen. He cut up his own animals – shooting himself in the foot, you might say. And then, he did not say: “I will come and do this to you, if you do not fulfill your oaths to support me and send warriors to help me.” Instead, he said: “I will do this to your oxen.” It’s almost humorous. He has already destroyed his own oxen, and now he threatens not the people, but their cattle. Again, even in his boldness, we see glimpses of insecurity.
Verse seven describes a large number of people who responded: three-hundred thousand men from “Israel,” plus thirty thousand from Judah.
I struggle with the actual numbers here. In World War Two, the famous American Third Army, led by General Patton, was about three hundred thousand men. But even in the days of Patton, it was a massive effort to keep so many men fed, supplied, and organized. The supplies were measured in thousands of tons. I find it difficult to believe that there was such a massive army in the days of king Saul, which was at the very beginning of the Iron Age.
Thankfully, there is a very easy explanation. The Hebrew word for “thousands” is written exactly the same way as another word that could mean “war leaders” or “chieftains,” or “family leaders.” In those days, relatively few people had weapons of bronze or iron. You had to be somewhat wealthy or influential in order to obtain such things. So battles were organized around a few well-armed warriors who had swords, spears, shields, and so on that were made of bronze or iron. These well armed warriors were each supported by a few followers who were more lightly armed with clubs, slings and perhaps farming implements.
Therefore, rather than a number, the word “thousands” could mean “well armed war leader and his followers.” Especially at this point in history, the word more likely meant something like that, rather than “thousands.”
So I think it is reasonable to read it that there were three hundred well-armed war leaders from Israel, plus another thirty from Judah, plus somewhere between five and twenty lightly armed followers for each leader. Therefore, my best guess is that this represents maybe two or three thousand men total.
In any case, they assembled for battle and went up and destroyed the Ammonites, saving the city of Jabesh-Gilead. This no-account, shame-filled place has now been protected and defended by the most powerful people in the country. As with the tribe of Benjamin and the city of Gibeah, they have been forgiven, and their shame removed.
I have pointed out some of Saul’s faults, and unfortunately, we’ll see even more in the future, but as I said last week, God was not just trying to mess up the Israelites for rejecting the Lord as their king. Saul, among all the tribes of Israel, would have been more sensitive to the shame and disgrace of Jabesh-Gilead than anyone else. His own tribe and clan had been under that same cloud until he was chosen as king. I am reminded again of 1 Corinthians, written by another man from the tribe of Benjamin, who was also (originally) called Saul:
26 Brothers, consider your calling: Not many are wise from a human perspective, not many powerful, not many of noble birth. 27 Instead, God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong. 28 God has chosen what is insignificant and despised in the world — what is viewed as nothing — to bring to nothing what is viewed as something, 29 so that no one can boast in His presence. (1Cor 1:26-29, HCSB)
Saul was chosen by the Lord. He started out well. God graciously gave him opportunity after opportunity to respond in faith. In this instance, he did.
What does all this mean for you right now?
Maybe, like Saul, you are facing confusion, hurt and disappointment with God. Perhaps the Lord has given you a calling or done something in your life that seemed momentous. It seemed like it was all heading somewhere. But now everyone is turning out the lights and heading home, and you are left to make your way back to life as usual, and you don’t understand. You wonder what it was all about, if all these ways in which God seemed to be at work amount to nothing. I don’t have every answer for you. But I do know that Saul experienced that. In time, however, God showed him what to do and opened up the opportunity to step fully into his calling. Trust the Lord that he will do that for you also, even if it looks like it is all over right now.
On the other hand, maybe you have been dealing with insecurity, like Saul. The Lord has shown you he is real. He has spoken to your heart, revealed himself through the Bible. But you aren’t sure if you can trust him. Maybe you are afraid to step up to God’s calling. Perhaps that is because you don’t yet know him very well. Here, you can take a different path than Saul. Seek the Lord. Seek him by reading the bible, or listening to recordings of scripture passages. Seek him in music, in fellowship with other Christians, in worship. And make a decision to trust him and trust that what he says is true. Trusting means you act in accordance with that trust.
You might be someone who feels like the city of Jabesh-Gilead. For a while maybe other people shared your shame or humiliation. But now they’ve been able to move on, and you are stuck in the same old place. You feel forgotten. Maybe things have even gotten worse lately. You’ve gone from a bad place to a really dangerous or horrible place. I think the Lord would say to you, through this scripture, “Do not fear! Do not give up hope. I never forget you. Sometimes I let things get a lot worse so I can then make them far, far better than ever before.”
Pause for a few moments now, and listen to what the Lord is saying. Thank him for it, and receive it with the choice of faith.
Saul was a tall, impressive, handsome man. The people wanted a king that would make them look good to other nations, and that made Saul the best choice, given their own parameters, which God honored, though it limited the options. Even at this early stage, there were some warning signs about Saul’s character. Yet, when the Lord chose Saul, he used that choice to end the shame of the small tribe of Benjamin, and he began to give Saul opportunities to respond to Him in faith.
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1 SAMUEL #7. 1 SAMUEL 9-10. THE CALLING OF SAUL
There is an age-old story line, repeated in all the great books and movies. Boy meets donkeys. Boy loses donkeys, and goes looking for them. Boy forgets donkeys when he meets the prophet who anoints him as the first king of his country. Boy briefly joins a group of different prophets, then goes back home, because the donkeys, having more common sense, are already home as well. You know what I’m talking about, right?
OK, so it isn’t a normal or well-known tale. But I love it, in part because it seems almost random. Yet in that randomness, we can see God at work. That gives me comfort when events in my own life seem both ordinary and random.
In chapter 8, The elders of Israel gathered and asked God to give them a king. Through Samuel, God warned them against it, but they persisted in asking for it anyway, so the Lord agreed to give them a king. Then everyone went home.
The narrative suddenly switches, and 1 Samuel chapter 9 tells us about a young man who went out with his servant to look for some lost donkeys. The young man was named Saul. He was not at the meeting where the people asked for the king. He was not seeking the Lord, or going on a pilgrimage to a place of worship. He was just doing his job, which at that moment, was to find his dad’s lost donkeys.
After a few days of wandering in the hills, Saul and his servant decided to give up. As they turned back, they were near Samuel’s hometown. Saul’s servant knew this, and suggested that they ask Samuel to ask God where the donkeys are. Saul wasn’t sure about it, because they had nothing to give Samuel, but the servant had some money. Saul then said, basically, “OK, if you think it will help us find the donkeys.” In other words, he had no desire to see a prophet in order to get closer to God, or to learn God’s will for his life. He just wanted God’s help with his own problems.
We learned at the end of chapter seven that Samuel used to travel around to various places in Israel and lead worship and judge disputes and share God’s words with the people. Even though Samuel did not live very far from Saul (compared to other areas of Israel) the two had never met. This implies that Saul had not, up to that point, been particularly interested in God. He clearly had never sought guidance from the Lord through Samuel for any other purpose, and he obviously had never taken a sacrifice to worship with Samuel when he was in Saul’s area. Even in our text for today, he seeks Samuel not because he wants to know God, but because he’s lost his donkeys. His focus is not on the will of God or on relationship with God, but rather what Samuel can do for him.
So by this point, we can already see some things about Saul. The first few verses tell us that he was an unusually tall and large man – the tallest man in all twelve tribes. It also says he was handsome. But other than that, there is nothing out of the ordinary about him. We can see from the incident with the donkeys that he isn’t particularly persistent. He isn’t especially patient, or spiritually sensitive. He’s just an ordinary person, except that he is very tall, and impressive to look at. He had no clue what was coming.
Samuel, as always, had been talking to God and listening. Samuel is one of my favorite heroes of the faith. The people wanted a king. God told Samuel he would grant their request. So Samuel went back to work, and waited for God. He didn’t immediately go out and try to find a king for them. He talked to God and listened, and then, some time later, God told him when to anoint the first king. So when Saul showed up in town, Samuel was ready. He recognized him as the person God had chosen to be the answer to the request of the people of Israel. God had previously told Samuel to expect someone like Saul, and so Samuel made him a guest of honor at the feast he was going to.
After the feast, Saul stayed overnight with Samuel. They spoke for a long time. Later, in private, Samuel poured oil on Saul’s head which was a symbolic gesture showing that Saul was now chosen by God. The significance of oil was that it represented the Spirit of God. The idea was, that along with the oil, the Holy Spirit was poured out onto Saul, and he was to be God’s chosen instrument from now on. The pouring of oil on the head, and the pouring out of God’s Spirit are both sometimes called “anointing.”
This anointing shows us one of the big spiritual differences between the time before Jesus, and the time since his resurrection. In the Old Testament it appears that God generally filled only one or two people with His Holy Spirit in each generation. It was as if he had just a few chosen instruments for each period. But the prophet Joel predicted a great change that would arrive after the coming of Jesus Christ, the Messiah:
28 After all of this I will pour out my Spirit on all kinds of people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your elderly will have revelatory dreams; your young men will see prophetic visions. 29 Even on male and female servants I will pour out my Spirit in those days. (Joel 2:28-29, NET)
That’s a promise that things were going to change. No longer would God limit his spirit to one or two people in each generation. Instead, all people who trusted the Messiah (Jesus) would have God’s Spirit in them.
In Acts 2:17, on the day of Pentecost, the Lord gave his Holy Spirit to all 120 followers of Jesus. Peter quotes this prophecy from Joel and affirms that it was fulfilled from that day on. And so, from that day on, God’s chosen instruments to work in this world are every single person who trusts in Jesus. It is no longer one or two people in a generation – it is all of God’s people. We are all given the anointing of the Holy Spirit to do God’s work here and now.
But in the time of Saul, this was still many centuries into the future. And so when Samuel anointed Saul, it was something very significant and very special. We can see this anointing at work almost immediately. Samuel predicts that the Spirit of God will fall on Saul, and change him:
The Spirit of the LORD will control you, you will prophesy with them, and you will be transformed into a different person. (1 Sam 10:6)
When Saul turned around to leave Samuel, God changed his heart, and all the signs came about that day.(1 Sam 10:9).
So the anointing was the outward sign of what was to take place spiritually with Saul. However, it was done in private, because Samuel wanted to make sure that Saul really was God’s choice. So he did this privately, and then also arranged a public ceremony (more on that later) where they asked God who should be king, and through the casting of lots, God again chose Saul.
Now, I want us to pause for a moment, and ask “Why Saul?” Saul himself asks basically the same thing in verse 21. Again, the only thing remarkable at all about him was that he was tall and handsome, and those had nothing to do with this character. I think God choosing Saul is all about God’s grace.
First, Saul was from the tribe of Benjamin. The patriarch Benjamin (son of Jacob) was the youngest of the twelve brothers who founded the twelve tribes. In those days, elders were honored above those who were born later. Even though we are talking about many centuries later, still, the tribe of Benjamin was descended from the youngest brother, which was not a place of honor.
Next, about two hundred years before the events we are looking at right now, one of the towns belonging to the tribe of Benjamin perpetuated a terrible atrocity. The story is in Judges 19-21. The other tribes demanded justice from the evil town, but the whole tribe of Benjamin made a terrible choice, and rose up to defend the evildoers. The result was war between Benjamin and the other eleven tribes, and the tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out – everyone was killed except for six-hundred men who fled to the hills. The other Israelites eventually forgave them, and wives were found from the other tribes for those six hundred Benjamites. This is why, two hundred years later, Benjamin was still the smallest tribe in Israel. Even in the time of Samuel and Saul, the tribe of Benjamin was probably still under a cloud of shame for their history of fighting a war to defend something that was truly wicked and sinful.
The Lord had twelve tribes from which to choose a king. But he chose the tribe of the last-born patriarch, the smallest tribe, and the one that was still under the cloud of a shameful history, to bring forth the first king of Israel. It is as if he is saying, “Tribe of Benjamin, your shame is removed. Look – I am paying attention to you. You are as significant and important as any other part of my people.” It is sheer grace.
There is another reason God might have chosen Saul himself. In the very near future, the Philistines were going to challenge Israel with a huge warrior – a giant of a man named Goliath. Israel’s new king – Saul – was also a very large man. Saul was not as tall as Goliath (who was probably nine feet tall) but many commentators speculate that while the average height of a man was maybe five foot three, Saul must have been well over six feet. Regardless of what the actual heights were, the Bible is clear that everyone else only came up to Saul’s shoulders in height; which is to say he was almost a foot taller than the next tallest man. Israel wanted a king who would lead them in battle. They wanted someone who would bring them respect among the other nations. Saul is big and strong and impressive. He is exactly what the people of Israel asked for.
Once Samuel heard from the Lord, he gathered the people of Israel. They chose the king not by election, but by a process that was like rolling a special kind of “dice” that had been blessed by God. The “dice” might have been the Urim and Thummin – special stones first mentioned in Exodus 28:30. This process was called “casting lots.” They would pray, ask God a question, and then cast the lots, trusting that God would determine the result. So they went through, asking about each tribe until Benjamin was chosen by the casting of the lots. Then Saul’s father’s family was chosen, and then Saul himself. So the choice that Samuel privately felt God had made was now confirmed in this public process. But when he was chosen, Saul hid himself among the baggage.
At first this makes it seem like Saul is charmingly humble. However, in light of what we will see in Saul’s life later on, maybe it wasn’t actually humility. Maybe it was reluctance to let himself belong so fully to God, reluctance to give up his own agenda in order to be God’s instrument in this world. We know that Saul was not spiritually sensitive, or even interested in God to begin with. God gave him his anointing, but we don’t see Saul really embracing it. We don’t really know much about how Saul received these things. It looks like it was mostly external for him.
Think of the contrast between Saul and Samuel. When Samuel was called, he invited God to speak to him. He said “speak for your servant is listening.” he spent his life listening to the Lord, and not shrinking back from what God said, waiting when God said “wait” and acting when God said “act,” speaking when God said, “speak.” He was willing to let God be God even when he didn’t understand why God would, for instance, let the people have a king.
Saul, on the other hand, didn’t look for God. He looked for donkeys. He didn’t look for the responsibility of leadership, and God practically had to force it on him. There is no record of him saying to the Lord, “I am your servant, use me as you please.” These things in Saul’s character are warning signs. They are seeds of destruction that, if not rooted out and given to the Lord, will end up causing big problems later on.
It wasn’t that God was trying to mess with the Israelites because they had rejected Him as king. But he was trying to allow them their free will, and answer their prayers. They had certain parameters. They wanted a king to give them respect among the nations. They wanted him to be a fine figure, impressive, a war leader. They didn’t want a prophet – they had rejected the idea of someone who listened to God and then encouraged them to do God’s will.
Before the lots were cast, Samuel warned the people again about the folly of choosing a king. But they went ahead with it anyway. So the Lord gave them the best possible king he could, given their demands and choices. But those demands and choices meant that their king would have other deficiencies. We can see those deficiencies already.
Sometimes God is more gracious to us and gives us greater blessing when he does not answer our prayers the way we want him to. But the Israelites insisted, and he allowed them to make their own choices.
We can see that this might all end badly, even so, this incident in Saul’s life shows us a little bit of how gracious and caring God is. Saul was not looking for God, he was looking for donkeys. And yet God was still reaching out to Saul. Saul had no thought of becoming a king, but God gave him a kingdom. He was not special in any way, except perhaps physically, and of course, his physical characteristics were something given to him genetically, not earned. Ultimately, his physical appearance came from God as well. Yet, in spite of the fact that Saul did nothing to deserve it, God chose him. This is grace, all the more amazing because it is totally unexpected, and totally undeserved.
So where does this leave us? Are you making demands of God? Perhaps God will give you what you ask for, but maybe you should consider letting him have his way instead. He is gracious sometimes to give us our free choices, but His will is always best. Sometimes there is more grace in a prayer that is not answered the way we want it to be.
Maybe the Lord is making it clear to you that he wants you to be his instrument in this world, but you, like Saul, are reluctant. God did use Saul, but Saul would have been much better off if he had willingly given up his own will and desires. Maybe like Saul, you’ve been coasting along, doing your thing, and God has gone out of his way to get your attention. Don’t be like Saul, who remained insensitive to the Lord even afterward. This is grace, and I encourage you to respond in faith and surrender, and re-orient your life and priorities around listening to God and letting Him live his life through you.
I myself was like Saul in that way for about three years. In college, I became convinced I was called to ministry. I finished college, and then spent almost five years in graduate school, and jumping through hoops in order to become a pastor. But then, after I had been a pastor for a few years, I decided I didn’t have to do that anymore, and I walked away from ministry. It didn’t go particularly well for me. After many hard lessons, the Lord brought me around to his way of thinking, and I went back into ministry. I learned that accepting the Lord’s call is always best.
Perhaps you feel like the tribe of Benjamin. You feel insignificant. Maybe there is a cloud of shame or disgrace in your past. Think of God’s grace to this tribe. That grace is for us as well:
26 Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. 27 Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. 28 God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. (1 Corinthians 1:26-28, NLT)
Listen! God has chosen you. He chooses the foolish to shame the wise, the lowly to shame the great, the small to teach the grand. Your shame is removed and God wants you.
Clear Bible 