Saul Begins His Lame Duck Reign
Tom Shrader walks through 1 Samuel 13 and 14, tracing how Saul's decision to offer the burnt offering rather than wait for Samuel marks the beginning of a hollow, joyless reign. The lesson draws a sharp contrast between Saul, whose eyes are fixed on his circumstances, and Jonathan, whose faith rests on God's unlimited ability to save. Shrader applies both portraits to everyday life, calling listeners to do God's thing, God's way, in God's timing, and to find their identity and satisfaction in Christ rather than in outcomes or circumstances.
“If you look for value, worth in anything other than Jesus, you will always be disappointed. There is no other person, there is no other thing, there's no place, there's no success — there's nothing that can do in your life what Christ will do.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Samuel
Recorded: 2009 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 26 min
Themes: obedience, faith, waiting on god, pride, identity, circumstances, trust, leadership, struggling with impatience, new to leadership, feeling overlooked, leader, navigating failure, young adult, struggling with pride, feeling identity lost in outcomes
Scripture: 1 Samuel 13:1, 1 Samuel 13:2, 1 Samuel 13:3, 1 Samuel 13:5, 1 Samuel 13:6, 1 Samuel 13:8, 1 Samuel 13:9, 1 Samuel 13:11, 1 Samuel 13:13-14, 1 Samuel 10:8, 1 Samuel 14:1, 1 Samuel 14:2, 1 Samuel 14:3, 1 Samuel 14:6, Genesis 3, Acts 4:13, 1 Corinthians
Theological Themes: divine sovereignty, covenant faithfulness, sanctification, obedience to god, typology, biblical narrative, salvation, imago dei
Full Transcript
Introduction: Stories with a Purpose
First Samuel, chapter 13. I want to hit a couple of big points today and apply them to our life. When we started this series, we established that what we have are stories that are true. We want to understand the stories, and then we want to understand what God is doing. We don't want to miss that God is the main character in all of this study. Then we want to ask you to put yourself right in the middle of this, to inject yourself into the picture. That is what we are going to do this morning.
Saul's Promising Start
What we have in First Samuel, chapter 13, is really the announcement of the reign of Saul. Samuel, the judge and prophet, has anointed Saul king. We get a summary statement in chapter 13, verse one: "Saul was 30 years old when he began his reign and he reigned for 40 years over Israel." It is a reign that starts with such promise. Remember the early signs we saw the last couple of weeks — when Saul is told he is going to be the king, he says, "Not me. It can't be me. I'm from a humble background, a small tribe. If God is going to do something, He is going to need somebody other than me." And the answer was, "No, Saul, it's you."
He then immediately has a huge military victory, and his approval ratings are through the roof. The people are loving Saul, and it looks like this is going to be 40 incredible years. But the whole story changes in the section we will look at today. Between today and next week, the whole environment changes.
One Action That Loses Everything
There is a great principle for us in this. Saul has all the goodwill in place. He has all the confidence of the people — and one action undoes it all, and he never really gets it back. Look at chapter 13, verse 13, where Samuel says to Saul, "You have acted foolishly. You have not kept the commands of the Lord." Verse 14: "And now your kingdom shall not endure. The Lord sought out for himself a man after his own heart, and the Lord has appointed him to rule over the people because you have not kept what the Lord had commanded."
You sense it very early in chapter 13, verse one, that Saul is essentially a lame duck king for all 40 years.
Jonathan's Victory, Saul's Credit
Saul has an army, and you begin to see its size in verse two. In verse three, we are told that Jonathan, his son, takes a thousand men and goes out and defeats a garrison of Philistines — a genuine victory. But look at the middle of verse three: "Then Saul blew the trumpets around the land saying, 'Let the Hebrews hear.'" And all Israel heard the news that Saul had struck the garrison.
All of a sudden something in Saul's character peeks out. This amazing victory took place, and Saul had absolutely nothing to do with it — but he was quick to take credit for it. He was the one standing there saying, in effect, "Aren't I great?" And the word spread through all the land: Saul, Saul, Saul.
The Lesson for Leaders
There are some real practical lessons in that moment. One I try to keep in front of our staff all the time, and that I have to keep in front of my own heart, is this: God will work through us and accomplish great things through us if we are not particularly concerned with who gets the credit — especially when somebody else has done the work to begin with. For those of you in business, or teaching in a classroom, or in any social environment where you have some capacity to lead: any time you can create an environment where, if things go wrong, you as the leader take the blame, and if things go right, you deflect the praise — you are going to create a really healthy environment. Saul did not do that. Saul took the credit.
The Philistines Counterattack
There are some initial successes, but things go south very quickly for Saul. The Philistines counterattack in verse five. They assemble to fight Israel with 30,000 chariots and 6,000 horsemen, and almost immediately the nation of Israel begins to crumble. You see it in verse six: "The men of Israel saw that they were in a strait, for the people were hard pressed." The people began to feel the pressure around them. "And the people hid themselves in caves and thickets and cliffs and cellars and pits." Some of the Hebrews even crossed the Jordan into the land of Gad. This nation that had been so energized suddenly becomes demoralized, and the soldiers are deserting.
Saul Disobeys a Direct Command
Look at verse eight. There is a great little phrase: "Now he waited seven days for the appointed time set by Samuel, but Samuel did not come and the people were scattered." They began to question the leadership of Saul himself. If you turn back to chapter 10, verse eight, Samuel had told Saul: "You shall go down to Gilgal, offer burnt offerings and the sacrifice of peace offerings, and you shall wait seven days until I come to show you what you should do." Saul recalled this instruction. We are told in verse eight that he waited seven days — but Samuel did not come. The people are scattering. The circumstances are gathering around him, and things are not going as he anticipated.
He was right at the end of the instruction. He had been told to wait seven days and Samuel would come and tell him what to do. He does not wait. Verse nine: "Bring to me the burnt offering and the peace offerings." He offered the burnt offering — and as soon as he finished offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came. Saul went out to meet him and to greet him. He misses God's blessing by a matter of minutes. God had given him specific instruction, but the circumstances began to crowd in around him. This is one of those moments.
Inserting Ourselves into the Story
Insert yourself in the picture. You are in the midst of your life, God has clearly spoken, He has told you what to do, and He has given you the instructions. Part of that is a timing issue — it is going to be clear to you. You will know it when He shows up. But the circumstances begin to build, the challenges start to come. Your eyes are taken off God and what He has told you to do, you are immersed in the circumstances around you, and all of a sudden you say, "I know God had a plan." Isn't that how we do it? "God, I know You have a plan. If You are going to work, do it fast. We don't have a lot of time, because if You are not going to do it, I will. God, I know You want to and I am sure You mean well, and it is clear what You have said, but I have a timetable here and things are getting away from me."
Samuel Confronts Saul
Saul goes out to greet Samuel, and Samuel confronts a sad thing he has seen — a man trying to do God's things a man's way. At this point Saul is without allies. The Philistines are angry with him, his son is going to be alienated from him, and Samuel is about to confront him. Look at verse 11. "What have you done?" Samuel asks. That is a great question, by the way. Anytime we are confronting anybody, or even examining our own life, it is so beneficial to simply start asking questions. What have you done? Stop. Think about it.
Saul answers: "Because I saw that the people were scattering from me, and you did not come within the time appointed, and the Philistines were assembling. Therefore I said, 'Now the Philistines will come down against me from Gilgal, and I have not asked favor of the Lord.' So I forced myself and offered the burnt offering." There is amazing self-righteousness in this. Saul is unwilling to deal with his own sin.
This goes all the way back to Genesis chapter three. Adam sins, God confronts him, and God says, "What did you do?" What does Adam say? It is the woman that You gave me. God confronts the woman, and the woman says it is the serpent that You created — as if to say, I would have done it if it had not been for the serpent. Saul does the same thing: "If you had been here on time, Samuel, I was forced into this. The circumstances were such, and your failure to get here compelled me to go. How long did you want me to wait?"
What It Means to Wait on the Lord
Let us talk about waiting for just a moment. Waiting does not mean doing nothing. To wait upon the Lord does not mean that we do not do anything. To wait upon the Lord means that we pray, we share and talk with one another, we gain wisdom, and we do what we know God would have us to do. But there is that point in time where we understand that we simply wait. We want to do God's thing, God's way, in God's timing — especially when He has spoken clearly.
God gives you some instruction in your life, and that instruction is clear. God does not say that once it becomes tough, you give it up — that once it becomes difficult, you throw in the towel. He says, "I will be there. I will give you the strength. I will give you the timing." And Samuel says to Saul: you have acted foolishly. You have not kept the command of the Lord. God gave you something to do and you simply refused to do it.
A Man After God's Own Heart
You were the people's choice, Saul. You were the one they wanted for king. And in verse 14 we find a driving principle — not just in this story, but in all of our lives. Samuel says: "Your kingdom will not endure. The Lord has sought out for Himself a man after His own heart, and the Lord has appointed him as ruler over His people, because you have not kept His command."
Let us stop and insert ourselves into the picture again. What is wonderful about the description of what God is looking for is that He does not list talent. He does not list attributes. He does not say intelligent. He does not say attractive. He simply says this: a person who is after God's own heart. You can do that, can you not? It does not matter how old you are. It does not matter what your background is. Gender does not matter. Education does not matter. You can be a man, a woman, a student after God's own heart.
The D. L. Moody Illustration
There is a wonderful story of D. L. Moody being confronted by Henry Varley. In the course of a message, Varley made a simple statement: "The world has yet to see what God can do with and through a man who is fully consecrated to Him." Moody went back that night, began to think about it, and began to replay it. He said, "This man didn't say anything about education." Moody was, by his own admission, a very humble man. Even when you go back and read some of his writings, he was not a very good scholar, not a very good writer, did not communicate particularly well, and was not especially gifted in any human sense. Those things were seen, in Moody's own mind, as handicaps in his life.
So that night Moody went home and reflected, and he said, "Varley didn't say anything about being handsome. He didn't say anything about wealth. All he said is somebody — somebody who is fully consecrated, that is, fully set aside, fully committed to the Lord, to Christ." Is that you? Not powerful, not wealthy, not even well connected, perhaps not even a great communicator — you can be that person. Those are the very type of people God uses.
What God Looks For in His People
That is exactly what we see in First Corinthians. When Paul is writing to that church, he holds it up in their face and points out that when he looks around, there are not a bunch of wealthy people, not a bunch of people that the world would consider remarkable.
The Danger of Impressive Credentials
The world would say, let's go build a movement around this — get the biggest and the brightest, build a board of directors with all the names that make everybody say "wow." But that's not true in the church. In fact, what Paul seems to say is that people like that get in the way, because when God begins to use somebody like that, we all get distracted by the person.
We go back, for the third week in a row, to Acts chapter four, verse 13. When Peter and John come before the Jewish leaders and they speak, the conclusion those leaders reach is that these men are uneducated and inexperienced — and yet they can see that they have been with Jesus. For the third week in a row, we're asking you that question: when you go to the market tomorrow, when you go to work, to school, to the gym — have they seen Jesus in you?
God Works Best in the Mess
Don't let the messy moments miss the point — in fact, those are often the best moments. There was a day, and I'll be transparent here, where that kind of disorder would have killed me, because I had this idea that everything had to be just right. But here's what I've come to understand: God is a little more into the messy than He is into everything in perfect order with a clean structure.
You are evidence of that, because a lot of your lives are pretty messy, and God tends to work best in the midst of that. When everything is moving along, running right on schedule, and everything is clear, you don't need Him, do you? If you're throwing no-hitters and winning game after game, you don't find yourself calling on Christ much. If you're closing every deal, the same is true.
Let me ask this question: don't you find yourself more serious about Jesus now than six months ago, when everything seemed fine in the economy and in the world? It's very much different, isn't it?
The Core Problem with Saul
The problem with Saul is really simply this: he's not rebelling against Samuel — he's rebelling against God. When God tells you what to do, you have one thing to think about, and that's simply to do it. To search our hearts. To find our satisfaction in Him and in Him alone.
I think I can understand a bit of what Saul is experiencing. When things begin to crush around you and they aren't going the way you planned or anticipated, you begin to want to take things into your own hands. You can't imagine that God would have you go through that. And yet just the opposite is so often true, isn't it?
Everything that happens in our lives is either allowed by or caused by God. His allowing or causing these things is not evidence that He has abandoned us. We know — those of us who know Christ as Lord and Savior — that we can never lose that salvation, that the Spirit dwells in us. He is not abandoning us. He is honing us. He is growing us.
What He is asking, in effect, is this: are you going to find your satisfaction in Me, or in the circumstances around you? Are you going to do things My way — which, by the way, is the best way, and in reality is the only way? Are you going to respond in obedience? Saul says no, and it costs him dearly.
Two Consequences of Saul's Rebellion
Two things happen in Saul's life as a result. Number one, his reign will continue for forty years, but it has no joy in it. He becomes a point of pain and personal ruin for the nation.
Here is the second thing, and it is bigger than the first: he has lost the leading and the vibrancy of a relationship with God. We understand, as Christians who know Jesus as Lord and Savior, that the Spirit dwells in us and that we have a union with Him that can never be broken. Nothing can break the union we have with God. But the communion — the vibrancy of that relationship — is deeply affected by our sin.
That is what is happening with Saul. Saul said, in effect, I am going to find my joy, my comfort, and my rest in something other than what You have told me to do. And that is what sin is always about, isn't it? In our own lives, when we say we know our identity is in Christ, and then we stop living that way — when I look at the times in my own life when there is a dryness, when I step back and examine it honestly, it is almost always because of something I have done. It is always about my sins, not God's.
Saul's Paralysis Versus Jonathan's Faith
Whenever we look for value and worth in anything other than Jesus Christ, we will always be disappointed. There is no other person, no other thing, no place, no success — nothing that can do in your life what Christ will do. This fault always comes back to trying to find identity or value in something other than Him.
There is an amazing contrast here between Saul, who at this point is fearful and lacks courage, and his son Jonathan, who appears in chapter 14. Saul is paralyzed by his circumstances, unable to move. Jonathan, on the other hand, is on the attack.
In chapter 14, verse one, Jonathan is moving forward. Verse two shows Saul staying on the outskirts, hunkered down. Verse three places him alongside a man named Ahiai, who comes from the priestly line of the fallen, rejected priests — so you have a rejected priest and a rejected king sitting together while God's man, Jonathan, is on the move.
The contrast is clear: Saul's eyes are riveted on his circumstances, while Jonathan's eyes are riveted on God. We will look at this story in more depth next week, but let us close with that contrast.
Jonathan's Faith: "Perhaps the Lord Will Work for Us"
Jonathan understands there is an enemy — the Philistines — and that this enemy needs to be confronted rather than waited out. Here is what he says in 1 Samuel chapter 14, verse six:
*"Then Jonathan said to the young man who was carrying his armor, Come, let us cross over to the garrison of the uncircumcised. Perhaps the Lord will work for us, for the Lord is not restrained to save by many or by few."*
Jonathan is declaring that God is big — whether there are few in opposition or many in opposition, God is not restrained. The word to latch on to here is *perhaps*, and it could be easily misunderstood.
Jonathan is not saying maybe God can do it, or hopefully He can, or he is not really sure. Jonathan is saying exactly what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said when they were going into the fire: our God is able to save us — but even if He doesn't, He is still a great God. Even if He doesn't, He is going to do what is right, what is fair, what is just, and what is perfect, and He will do that in your life today.
Faith in the Midst of Discouraging Circumstances
Maybe you came here today a little discouraged. Maybe your circumstances are starting to get a hold of you. Here is what faith says: God is able to do it. God is able to sell that house. God is able to replace that job. God is able to do amazing things. But even if He doesn't, that does not mean He does not love you, and it does not mean He is not God.
What it means is that He is going to work some other way. He is going to teach you another lesson. He is going to use you in some way beyond anything you could have possibly ever imagined. And what He says is: you wait. That does not mean do nothing — you pray, you wait, you talk, you gather information, you work as though it depends on you, though it doesn't. And you wait and see what He will do.
He is able to save us from this fire. But even if He doesn't, He is a great God, and a mighty God, and a holy God. He is not a God merely to read about in the Bible who is disengaged from our lives today — He is actively engaged in changing lives and transforming our hearts, so that we have an informed mind and can live a radical life.
Remembering What God Has Done
One of the ways God so often communicates to us is through stories — stories of redemption, where God gets involved in a person's life and begins to move in a way that is undeniably Him, where it cannot be anything or anybody else. As you work through Scripture, you will see that word again and again: *remember, remember, remember*. To the nation of Israel He said, remember what I did when you came out of Egypt.
In a few minutes, when we celebrate communion together, He is going to say to you and me: *remember what I did*. He wants us to look back to the cross. God takes our lives and makes them something special — not because we are special, but because He is. We have an opportunity this morning to hear a story about how God works in one person's life, making it something special for His glory. I would like to welcome my friend Colleen to share that story with us.