June 14, 2020 King Saul 1 Samuel 9-10:8

The story of the choosing and anointing of Saul as the first Jewish king is quirky and unpredictable. It may seem very strange to our ears, but biblical scholar Norman Habel points out that the story is in the typical pattern of a “prophetic call narrative”. I’m not going to go into all the details of that. Let’s just say that the stories of God calling people to leadership like Moses, Gideon, and many of the prophets, are all told with similar elements. This shouldn’t surprise us. We’ve studied ancient Hebrew stories enough to know that they have common elements and patterns.

Anyway, let’s notice some things. Last week’s Bible reading about the people asking Samuel to set up a king for them ended with these words, “Samuel then said to the people of Israel, “Each of you return home.” It was an unusual ending and I left it like that deliberately. We picked up today with the very next verse, “There was a man of Benjamin…”

I hope that all strikes you as odd. Let’s notice what Samuel, as the key prophet God is working through does NOT do. Samuel does not say, “Let the smartest and strongest among you step forward for us to choose as king.” Nor does he say, “Let’s start a campaign to see who the people want as king.” He also does not say, “Each go to your home and make a short list of candidates. We’ll bring them all together in 90 days and decide.” He also doesn’t form a committee. He doesn’t put together a commission. He doesn’t do anything!

That’s not how we understand leadership! I know we’ve probably all made sarcastic comments about the fact that far too many politicians are lawyers, and that other occupations are underrepresented, but for the most part, we seek qualified people to lead. If you are a soldier in the army and you’re going to head into battle would you really want just any old clerk from Wal-Mart to lead you? No, you want someone with training and experience!

I see all the heavy excavation work being done at the end of Lynaugh road for the creation of that traffic circle. You can all be thankful that I’m not the one chosen to operate the big Caterpillar bulldozer they have there! It’d be a colossal mess!

Big tasks take qualified people. Not everyone has those skills. Some may not have them but be able to develop them. Some may not have them and never develop them. One thing I will never be good at is dancing, no matter how hard a try. You don’t want me as a dance instructor. Just ask my kids. At a recent protest on the front lawn of the Ontario County Courthouse the one leader had the whole crowd do a very simple dance. I couldn’t do it!

When it comes to leadership, you need well qualified people to do it. Otherwise things are chaos.

Samuel sends the people home with no plan whatsoever. Let that part of the story sink in deeply.

According to the Bible the choosing of the first king of Israel is entirely God’s work. There is no human wisdom or discernment involved.

God simply chooses Saul. Why? Because God chooses Saul! That’s why!

Whether it’s King Saul, or King David who will follow him, or one of the prophets, many of the people we meet in the Old Testament are chosen by God for no particular reason we can understand. That is a significant theme of the Old Testament – that God does not limit God’s activity to the established leadership. God does not limit God’s activity to the wise, the strong, the rich, the well connected, or the clever. In fact, quite often God raises people from obscurity for the work to be done.

That is an interesting teaching to hear. It is a harder one to believe. God can call you to just about anything at just about any time. Abraham was a quite elderly man before God called him. The same goes for Moses. And Saul was just an ordinary farmer.

There is one very very frustrating thing I find about two of God’s choices, however. They are qualities about the first two kings, Saul and later David. Both of them are described as exceptionally good looking. I’d like to think that God uses more discernment than that in choosing leaders, but that is part of the story. We’re going to find that very puzzling when we look at David next week.

In any event, moving on.

God chooses Saul. Saul has not done any lobbying. He is taken completely unawares. He really isn’t even given the chance to say no. Over and over again in the Bible we find that God’s chosen leaders are reluctant to lead. But they do it anyway. So if your heart feels reluctant to responding to God’s call, you are not alone.

Let’s spend a few minutes outlining Saul’s career as leader before we wrap up. I’m going to skip a lot of details, but you can always read it in 1 Samuel 10-31.

Saul is anointed by Samuel. This is very significant. All the kings are seen as anointed by God’s prophets. Thus the king is given the divine right to rule. Now we’re going to discover that most of the kings were bad and exploited this, but nevertheless, being God’s anointed ruler is being God’s anointed ruler. Good or bad, they were seen as reigning by God’s choosing. There was no separation of church and state. To speak of one was to speak of the other.

Saul does not immediately set about creating a government. In the chapters that follow we discover that he is more of a military general than anything else. The Philistines were a small nation to the west of the Israelites. They were attacking Israeli people and Saul puts together an army that leads to their eventual defeat.

Later on Saul begins to select officials and for the first time an actual government begins to take shape. Then Saul truly becomes the king.

If you know the stories of Saul well you know that he becomes mentally unstable. We’ll look at some more of that next week as we look at David’s rise to power. David becomes a rising leader in Saul’s government. Sometimes Saul praises David. Sometimes Saul tries to kill him.

We don’t have enough details about Saul to know what was really going on. What is important from the stories, however, is that Saul is God’s anointed king and therefore has a legitimate claim to power that no one can take away.

Saul makes a number of rash decisions that the Bible says leads to God eventually rejecting him and his lineage as king. The first big one is before he goes into battle against the Philistines. It was typical for a military leader to make sacrifices to the gods before a battle in order to gain the gods favor. Our final verse in the first reading was 10:8 where Samuel said to Saul, “You shall go down to Gilgal ahead of me; then I will come down to you to present burnt offerings and offer sacrifices of well-being. Seven days you shall wait, until I come to you and show you what to do.”

Those seven days come and go. Samuel doesn’t arrive. Saul’s army is beginning to dessert. So Saul takes matters into his own hands and makes the sacrifices himself. Samuel then arrives and scolds Saul. Personally I think Saul’s actions were justified. Perhaps we the readers are to believe that too. But it is considered a breach of authority by Samuel.

Saul makes some rash oaths that come back to bite him. And what appears to be Saul’s greatest mistake comes in Chapter 28 of 1 Samuel. The prophet Samuel has died. Saul again needs to go to battle against the Philistines. Saul inquires of God for advice and receives no answer. Saul then disguises himself and seeks a medium, a practicer of black magic, to raise the spirit of Samuel from the dead. Read it in Chapter 28 sometime. It is all very disturbing, but it is the ultimate breach of trust with God. The seeking of advice from anything other than God is absolutely forbidden.

I highly encourage you to read 1 Samuel 10-28 in the days to come. We’re going to be looking at parts of it for the next two weeks. You’ll notice the storyline is not consistent. It jumps around chronologically. It’s probably a compilation of a number of sources. Pay special attention to Saul’s mistakes. I hope you find yourself thinking that at least some of them are perfectly reasonable – things that you could see yourself doing if you were in his shoes. Yet they get Saul into trouble.

1 Samuel can greatly trouble our understanding of God. God seems arbitrary and inconsistent. God seems unfair and maybe even cruel. I don’t think 1 Samuel is intended to be deep theology about God’s nature, however. I think 1 Samuel is designed to teach us that God’s ways are not our ways. That God’s wisdom is not our wisdom. That God’s ways are not bound by human logic or a human sense of fairness.

If 1 Samuel were all we had of God we’d have a very troubling picture indeed. However, in our Lord Jesus we have God giving the ultimate revelation. In Jesus God does not give up any of God’s sovereignty, God does not give up any of God’s mystery. But God does show that God is ultimately working out of love for humanity and the world.

When God is frustratingly quiet, or is asking you to do the impossible, or calling you to do something you know you are unqualified for, remember Saul. And remember

that God is always empowering and equipping you; and loving you through every day.