The New King

When Samuel saw Saul, the Lord said to him, "Behold the man of whom I spoke to you! This one shall rule over my people."

1 Samuel 9:17

As we continue to look at the life and ministry of Samuel, we come to one of the most important chapters of the whole of the Old Testament history, with its record of the relationship between Samuel and Saul, the first king of Israel. In the last chapter we saw the request of the children of Israel to Samuel, that he would find a king for them like all the other nations. It seemed a very innocent request, but God analyses their request and shows it to us for what it was -- a rejection of his own sovereign rule among his people, the nation of Israel.

The sad thing was that it was largely Samuel's own neglect of his parental duties that led ultimately to the elders of Israel making this request. His own sons turned aside to take bribes and overthrow justice. Because the sons of Samuel failed to walk in the ways of Samuel, the Israelites wanted a king, since the other nations had a king; one who would rule them, judge them and defend them. This was a wholesale rebellion against the rule of God. Up until this point, Israel had been a theocracy, a nation governed by God. Now Israel is going to become a monarchy -- a nation governed by a king. In rejecting God and turning away from him, they have sold away their greatest blessing and privilege, their history and privileges -- all that God has done and been for them. They no longer wish to look heavenwards for direction and guidance.

This represents for us the difference between following the religion of the Bible and following the world's way. On the pages of the Bible, the sovereignty of God in Christ stands out in clear prominence and relief. There is a Gospel for us to preach because God is our king. There is salvation because of the kingship of Jesus -- the lamb who takes away the sin of the world is in the midst of the throne. It is because he is what he is, and where he is, that we have a Bible to read, a Gospel to preach, and a salvation to offer to sinners. It is because of the kingship of Jesus Christ, because of his kingly office and sovereign rule, that there is a message of salvation and a free and unfettered offer of life in the Gospel if they will repent.

In other words, the reason there is a Gospel is not because we are what we are, not because the church is what it is, but in spite of what we and the church might be, and because of what Jesus is. He is the great prophet who tells us about God, the great priest who has opened the way to God, but he is also the great king, who can make his enemies bow before him, and to submit to his rule. In the experience of all his people -- in the life of every Christian, that is what he has done. He has broken the dominion of sin and he sits on the throne of hearts and lives. Were it not for the sovereign grace of God and purpose of his salvation, we could have no Gospel.

So if we begin with the New Testament, and trace the work of the Gospel down through history, we will see that the times of revival, reformation and blessing in the church were at times when men acknowledged the great throne of Heaven, and were humbled before the presence of that throne, and preached the doctrines of free, sovereign grace through Christ. That is what precipitated the Reformation, and the Great Awakening in the time of Jonathan Edwards, and the great revivals -- the preaching of the truth as it is in Jesus, and the acknowledging that Jesus is sovereign in the proclamation of the Gospel and in the salvation of every sinner who repents.

The moment we depart from the primary place of God's sovereignty in our doctrine or preaching and say, like Israel, "Give us a man to sit on the throne", that draws our attention away from a God-centred, God-authored and God-focussed salvation to a man-centred salvation. That is the moment we forfeit the Gospel. The moment we hinge everything on what men can do, and engineer, and manufacture, is the moment we have sold our birthright.

That is what Israel was doing. "Give us a king like the others," they cried. "Give us a man to occupy the throne", they said. Instead of looking upwards to the sovereign rule of God, and in spite of all God had done, they wanted to be fashionable and like every other nation.

Let us not be ashamed to acknowledge our Calvinism, and to proclaim the great doctrines of the Reformation which have been bequeathed to us and the preaching of the Gospel. But if we are going to embrace these doctrines, we must make them our whole life doctrines, and we must live for them, and by them. We need to evangelise with them, and structure our church around them. They are the very lifeblood of our faith, and the lifeblood of our religion. The moment we move from doctrines to men, and lose the vision of the centrality of Christ is the moment we have committed Israel's great sin and apostasy. There is no use being a Calvinist by profession if we are going to be Arminians by practice!

There is no use, in other words, to profess with our mouths that God alone saves, if our religion, in fact, is going to focus on men, and what men can do. I am appalled to hear men saying "If I'm in the elect I'll be saved". What are they doing? They are taking the great doctrine of God's sovereignty in election and living as if it was not there at all! Do you see this? The man who says "If I'm elect I'll be saved" is the man who does not want to be saved.

If a man really wants to be saved, he'll hear and listen to and obey the voice of God in the Bible, which says "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call on him while he is near". The man who says "God settled it all before the foundation of the world, and I'll wait to see whether I'm elect or non-elect, and there is nothing more I can do about it" is the man who is not burdened by the great issues of salvation! The man who is burdened about salvation has seen the great white throne, and he has seen the lamb of the throne, and he knows that his business is with the Christ of that throne, and he seeks him, and comes to him because of sovereign invitation.

So here is Israel now, in spite of her past, and in spite of God's favours and mercies in the past, looking now for a man-centred solution to her problems. Can I put it this way -- this was the point when Israel turned from being Calvinistic to being Arminian! This was the point when Israel's practice was out of step with her profession, and she turned from being a God-focussed people to being a man-focussed people. "Give us a king!"

Instead of looking to God, Israel asks for a king, and God gave them what they asked for. Sometimes, as we saw, that is the worst thing God can do for us. Sometimes when God gives us what we ask, he is judging us by acceding to our request. But the wonderful thing is this -- that even at this point, when they were rejecting the sovereign rule of God in their lives, God was over-ruling their rejection of him for his glory and their good. Here is the mystery of grace overcoming the mystery of iniquity -- their very rebellion against God's kingship was the occasion when God proved himself to be the King of all kings, and the Lord of all lords!

So while they were saying that they would not bow to the sovereignty of God, God was seated on his throne, ruling over every event that was taking place in their history and experience. This is the great encouragement for the church; there are many reasons for discouragement and for despair -- the world seems to be taking over, and rejecting the finality and authority of Christ. Sin abounds and the law, name, day and people of God are despised and rejected. But even in the midst of the world's sin and greatest transgression, there is a God in Heaven who is overruling every event that is taking place in history.

No matter how far men go in their sin, or how far evil grows, and darkness covers the face of the earth, and men reject the truth of the Gospel -- the God of Heaven is writing out the history of the world and moving it forward to the final redemption of his people. God gave Israel what they asked for, and in doing so, was moving history forward to the culmination and the design and the purpose of his own will.

He is ruling, sovereignly, preparing the way for his own king to come, for the vindication of his own name and the exalting of his own glory. The teaching of the Bible is that there is a day coming when all those who are at this moment pitted against Christ, rejecting him, will stand before him and acknowledge him as the God he is. Every tongue that said 'There is no God' will say 'Christ is God'. Everyone will acknowledge the emptiness of the world, and will acknowledge that Christ was the only way, and truth and life.

Those who pushed forward the frontiers of sin will acknolwedge the God against whom they rebelled, and it will be to the glory of God the Father. The great issues of the Gospel bid us to bow willingly to Christ, and to accept him as he is offered, for a day is coming when we will be constrained to bow.

Samuel has a critical role to play in this great drama unfolding in Israel's history. What is going on here? Saul was sent out to look for the missing donkeys of his father, Kish. It is interesting that Saul was from the tribe of Benjamin -- so was the Saul of the New Testament, yet how different they both turned out to be.

The greatest events sometimes have the most unlikely origins. Here is this story, beginning with missing donkeys; but all the time God is taking Saul to a meeting with Samuel that will change his destiny, and the destiny of Israel, for ever. And then, with the anointing of Saul, God's word will be fulfilled. What are the emphases of this chapter? I think there are three things highlighted for us: Saul SEARCHING; Samuel WAITING; God MARKING OUT Saul as the one who will deliver God's people from the Philistines.

Saul Searching

Saul has a task to perform. It is not very honourable, but there was a loss. That's where the chapter begins: with a man of Benjamin, the son of Kish, a man of power. Saul was goodly, he stood head and shoulders above the rest. But the donkeys were lost!

Perhaps it is difficult for us to appreciate the importance of this fact. For all the wealth, power and prestige of this family, here was a major catastrophe in their household. These animals played a crucial part in the livelihood of the family and the economic wellbeing of the home. For everyday work and life, they were indispensable. But the animals were missing, and needed to be recovered. Do you see the tremendous pathos and irony and marvellousness of this story? Saul went out looking for donkeys -- and he came back with a kingdom!

God's eye, you see, was on him, even at the point of that loss. And I dare say that there are many people in whose lives the story of Saul has something of an echo; many people who are heirs of a kingdom and who have found a kingdom, to whom God has given a kingdom that cannot be shaken. You know, God's church will sing in the glory of the one who loved them, and washed them from their sins, and made them KINGS and priests to God.

You see, if we are in Christ, we have a kingdom, in all the fulness of God's salvation. That kingdom is unlike any other, and unlike all the kingdoms of this world, it cannot be threatened, or shaken, or taken away. We have it in our possession. And there are many who came to find that kingdom by way of personal loss. They came to be heirs of that great inheritance because something was lost; something was amiss; something went wrong. Some trauma, or difficulty, some unplanned disaster, which led them to search and enquire, until they came to a place where they found more than they thought possible, as Saul himself did.

Perhaps you can say that the first stirrings of an interest in Christ in the Gospel began at a time of personal tragedy and loss -- perhaps the loss of a loved one, or of something important and precious in your life, in your career; God, for one reason or another, took it away. Maybe that started you going out on a road that led you to a place where what you lost suddenly was nothing in comparison with what you found, and what you lost lost its value in comparison with what you gained.

Perhaps even at this moment you are trying to cope with some disturbance, or turmoil, or trial, or loss, something that has happened in the Providence of God that has turned things right around. Perhaps you are still looking to the past to some trauma in your history, whose meaning and purpose you have yet to understand. There are times when God takes the smallest things away in order to give us the greatest things instead. Maybe you have reason to thank God for these losses that came your way, because they started you out searching for meaning, and purpose and significance.

You see, the world will go with us, and be behind us, and go before us; but in our times of crisis and loss, the world will soon walk away from us. I wish we could convey this to our young people -- friends can laugh and play and sing and dance with us, but when crisis comes they will walk away; a close friend won't do that, but far too often the friendships of this world are fairweather -- only when things go well, and there is plenty laughter and music and dancing, but in nights of pain, loneliness and crisis, how will we cope? Where will we go when our crisis is so real that we think the world shouldn't go on? It has no right to go on! Does it not notice our pain?

Remember the prodigal son -- he had it all: his father's inheritance and money. He had plenty friends as long as he had his father's money to spend on them. But when the money ran out, the friends ran out too. It was at that point of loss that he began his search, and came home. Many people wasted their lives just the same, and God brought them to crisis point, until God led them to find a kingdom.

Whatever our situation is, or whatever loss we may have sustained in the past, let's hear the voice of God in the Gospel urging us to seek a kingdom. Christ is a man of sorrows, no fairweather friend, but a brother born for adversity. He's with his people when the sun shines, and he's with them when the clouds darken their sky, and things change, and loss occurs, and we find ourselves without hope in the world. He is with us when everything is bright and joyful, and he is with them when they sustain loss and deprivation.

It is only in Christ that we are secure and complete. Does Saul's search have an echo in our life? Are we looking for answers and purposes and solutions to the great issues that have affected us? There is a kingdom far greater than that which Saul received -- to belong to Christ and his church is the greatest answer to life's greatest crises.

Samuel Waiting

While Saul searched, Samuel waited. Saul did not know this; Samuel came to sacrifice, and the previous day God had said to him 'Tomorrow about this time I'll send you a man of the tribe of Benjamin. You'll anoint him king over my people Israel -- he will deliver my people from the Philistines'. When Saul comes to the place he is looking for Samuel, for the 'seer'. He does not know where Samuel is; this is part of the quest -- he does not know who or where Samuel is, or even if he'll recognise him when he meets him.

Look at how different it is with Samuel -- God has given him detailed instructions from God. Told him when he would arrive, what he would be like; in fact, when Saul turned up, God looked at him and said to Samuel, 'That's him!' No one said to Saul 'That's Samuel!' but God said to Samuel 'That's Saul!'. You see, God was going ahead of Saul all the time.

You know, there are times in our lives when we wonder what God is doing with us -- then we discover that God has been running ahead of us all the time. There is a phrase that men used to use in prayer describing God as the 'breaker up' of the way. What does that mean? It means that no matter what we are, or where we are, in life, God has run ahead of us -- he has blazed a trail for us! Wherever we may be walking through life, in this wilderness world, he has gone ahead of his people, mapping out the road for them, in order to strengthen them for the way they must take.

Was that not Job's comfort, when everything he had was gone and taken from him -- he could not even pray -- "O that I knew where I might find him!" (Job 23:1). Isn't that what Saul was saying about Samuel? Saul did not know where Samuel was. And are there not times when we have to say the same about God -- we just do not know where he has gone, or where he may be found. But this is what Job says in the same breath -- "but he knows the way that I take, and when he has tried me, I will come forth like gold" (Job 23:10). Perhaps unknown to anyone else, there are things that are leaving us searching for God, looking for assurance that God is real, and that God will bless.

The great blessing that belongs to us is this -- God in Heaven is able to say to Samuel "There's Saul!" While Saul is searching for answers, direction and peace, God is going before him, with his eye upon him. That's why Samuel was waiting. Theologians sometimes describe grace as "prevenient"; that means that it "goes before" -- it runs ahead, it anticipates and prepares, and it means that no search for God will go unrewarded. It is the ultimate guarantee of the Gospel -- those who seek will find.

Zaccheus was saved because "the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost". The Gospel says to the lost to seek -- we must be seekers. We must place ourselves in the way of covenant blessing. There is a Christ for us to find, and the reason sinners will find him is because he finds them. He has been going before them in their lives, and he is still the seeker and the finder of the lost. All those for whom he died will come into his kingdom because none of those whom the Father has given the Son will be cast out. And they will find him when they seek him, if they seek him with all their heart.

Little wonder John Newton could write about the 'Amazing Grace' that 'saved a wretch like me' -- I was lost, but now I am found. You see -- he is placing the emphasis not on what HE found, but on the fact that he WAS found, by the saving grace of God. The Gospel brings us face to face with Christ, and still he saves sinners by seeking and saving the lost.

And for those who know him, his eye is always on them, whatever may be our difficulties and trials. He knows the way we take. He is looking after us, strange as his Providence may be in our experience at times. There is nothing too hard for him, and at the moments of our greatest need, perhaps that is the moment when he will do his greatest work in our lives, and show us the reality and the glory of his grace.

God Marking Out Saul

Saul needs to be separated for the work of kingship. God is over-ruling the rebellion of his people, singling out Saul to rule over Israel. Do you see Samuel as he takes Saul to sit among the people in his own house, entertaining them there among the thirty persons of renown and importance. See what happens -- the cook comes in with the shoulder of the animal that has been killed for the banquet (verse 24, KJV). Do you know what the Bible says? It says that the right shoulder of the animal killed for eating belonged to the priest -- it was the priest's portion, because the portion given to the priest was regarded as being offered to the Lord (see Leviticus 7:33-34; 8:25ff).

That must always be our attitude in our giving to the Lord. It is by supporting God's work in the world that we give to Him. The principle that regulates the offerings of the people of God in both the Old and New Testaments is that by giving practical and financial support to the work of the church, we give to the Lord. Otherwise, as Malachi puts it, we are robbing the Lord.

The Levitical law required that the right shoulder be given to the priest; the other shoulder is then given to Saul (verse 24). Gradually, step by step, God is singling Saul out -- eventually Samuel takes Saul aside and says to him that he has a personal message from God for Saul alone (verse 27). Is this not what happens when God begins to work in the lives of men and women -- he singles them out by his Providence and through his word!

The Word of God has to become personal to us. That is what happens with Saul -- God is closing him in in order to set him apart. Have we felt the Gospel doing this in our own lives? Homing in on us and separating us so that God's work would be done in our lives? Have we ever met God in this way? Face to face? If we are to know the blessing of his salvation at all, we need to be taken aside by God, so that we will have a portion in the kingdom that cannot be shaken.

There is no life worth living but the life that has been set apart BY God, and FOR God through the claims of his truth. May his word so impress us that we too will come to live our lives to his glory alone!

© Iain D. Campbell 2001