I SAMUEL – LESSON 4

“What’s Your Excuse for Disobedience?”

David Arthur, Teacher

Open your Bibles to I Samuel 13. Our text this morning is going to take us through the first fifteen verses. There was a controversy in the early church between 726-843. Serious controversy raged up in the church, and it basically split the church. In 726 to 843, about a hundred years there, the controversy actually began with a good thing. There was a group of people who wanted to teach the truths of God to the illiterate, to those who couldn’t read. So they had this idea—they began to create images, pictures, paintings, and statuettes of the different characters and events of Scripture, and they would use those to teach them. In its early days it really had a good success rate, and it really seemed to be working out. But then things began to change. Something went wrong. These images, later to be called icons, replaced the very teaching of the word of God. What went wrong? The icons, the images, though they had started off to come along beside the word of God for the illiterate, found themselves replacing the word of God.

This is not new to the church today. In fact we are going to see it in I Samuel 13 with Saul. We are going to find that Saul did something very similar to the icons in the 700’s. Saul placed ritual exercise, he took religious activity, he took practicing sacrifices, and he placed them above the word of God. Let’s look and see how this works. As we do, I want you to ask yourself, what role does the word of God play in my life? Think for yourself on that. What role, what position of authority, does the word of God have in my life?

Our outline this morning is very simple. It is two parts: Circumstances and Response.

  1. vv. 1-8 - Circumstances. This is going to be the setting that we are going to see in I Samuel 13. (The actual events, the history, what’s going on.)
  2. vv. 9-12 - We are going to see Saul responding to those circumstances.
  3. v. 13 - After his response, God is going to set a new circumstance.
  4. vv. 14-15 - Looking at the response of God. You can see the parallelism here: Circumstances of vv. 1-8 parallel to verse 13; the response of vv. 9-12 parallel to response of God in vv. 14-15.

Look with me at the Scriptures, and let’s read it together. I Samuel 13:1,” Saul was forty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-two years over Israel. (2) Now Saul chose for himself 3,000 men of Israel, of which 2,000 were with Saul in Michmash and in the hill country of Bethel, while 1,000 were with Jonathan at Gibeah of Benjamin. But he sent away the rest of the people, each to his tent. (3) And Jonathan smote the garrison of the Philistines that was in Geba, and the Philistines heard of it. Then Saul blew the trumpet throughout the land, saying, ‘Let the Hebrews hear.’ (4) All Israel heard the news that Saul had smitten the garrison of the Philistines, and also that Israel had become odious to the Philistines. The people were then summoned to Saul at Gilgal. (5) Now the Philistines assembled to fight with Israel, 30,000 chariots and 6,000 horsemen, and people like the sand which is on the seashore in abundance; and they came up and camped in Michmash, east of Beth-aven. (6) When the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait (for the people were hard-pressed), then the people hid themselves in caves, in thickets, in cliffs, in cellars, and in pits. (7) Also some of the Hebrews crossed the Jordan into the land of Gad and Gilead. But as for Saul, he was still in Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling. (8) Now he waited seven days, according to the appointed time set by Samuel, but Samuel did not come to Gilgal; and the people were scattering from him.”

Here are the circumstances. This is the setting in which we find our story. First of all, Jonathan is the one who does the work. Look at v. 3. Jonathan is the one who smote the garrison of the Philistines. Saul comes up behind Jonathan, blowing his trumpet and saying, “All right, let’s rally around my boy here, Jonathan.” But in v. 4, he turns and gives the credit to Saul. Saul had smitten the Philistines. Right off the bat, at the beginning of our story, we find out that there is something wrong with the kingship—that his son is the one doing the work, and he’s the one taking the credit for his son’s work.

You remember, we looked previously at Samuel. We saw how the people of God cried out for a king. One of the reasons was that they wanted to be like the other nations. The text was very clear, that this calling for a king was really a rejection of Yahweh as king. It was rejection of God as their authority. Here we see already the kingship begins to crumble, and Jonathan is the one doing it. Everyone here (here in the text) goes to Gilgal, as Samuel had instructed earlier. If you want, mark out in your margin—Chapter 10:8. That’s where we find the instruction from Samuel where he says, “Go to Gilgal, and wait for me there seven days.” So there they are in Gilgal, waiting. Meanwhile something bad is happening; something really wrong is going on. What is it? Look at your text. The Philistines are mad. Israel has become a stench, literally, in the nostrils of the Philistines. That’s another way of saying, “Uh-oh, here come the Philistines.” They don’t just send another troop out there; they gather their entire force. The text wants you to feel, wants you to experience the overwhelmingnessof the circumstances, so it describes the massive army as “the sand on the seashore.” Have you ever tried to count sand on the seashore? It’s impossible. Well, it says the army seemed very similar. It was impossible. The circumstances are dire. The response of the people is fear.

They look at the circumstances around them and they’re afraid to the point that the text says they saw, in v. 6, raah in the Hebrew. They saw with their eyes their circumstances, and the response is found later in v. 6, they hid themselves. You have to ask yourself, “Just how well is this king working out for them?” Remember all that dialog back in chapter 8, about, “We want a king to fight the battle for us.” What’s up now? They are hiding in caves, and cellars, and pits. They are like animals who have scattered, or like roaches that scatter when the kitchen light cuts on. They have gone into the crevices. The people of God are afraid, doubt rises up, and fear rises up. It says later on that they were trembling, literally quaking in their boots, from fear. Those are the circumstances. War is a circumstance. Pending doom and destruction from the archenemy of Israel seems to be about to happen. I want to press that, in vv.1-8. I want you to feel the circumstances, because in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on this date, you may feel like Saul is just a great big fat coward about what he is about to do. You may just be saying, “Can’t he get his act together? What is his issue? He follows God.” But I want you to put yourself in his sandals. I want you to feel the intense pressure that’s around him, the circumstances that cause the people of God to shake in their boots.

Let’s look now at I Samuel 13: 9-12, to see Saul’s response here to the circumstances. (9) “So Saul said, ‘Bring to me the burnt offering and the peace offerings.’ And he offered the burnt offering. (10) As soon as he finished offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came; and Saul went out to meet him and to greet him. (11) But Samuel said, ‘What have you done?’ And Saul said, ‘Because I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the appointed days, and that the Philistines were assembling at Michmash, (12) therefore I said, “Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not asked the favor of the Lord.” So I forced myself and offered the burnt offering.’”

This really is the crux of the matter. This really is the center of the text of what Saul does in response. He waits seven days, as he was told to in 10:8, but apparently he didn’t wait a complete seven days, because the text later on says,“You broke the command of God.” But he waits his time, he believes in his mind; he waits, but he watches. You know what he does? He determines that his circumstances override the command of God. He evaluates what’s going on, the Philistines are assembled to battle against them, the people are hiding in caves, everything seems to be falling apart; so he decides, “You know what; my circumstances allow me a trump card.” You know what a trump card is. You are playing Crazy Eights, and you don’t have a card, and you draw an 8. Eight means you can make it anything you want it to be. He thought that his authority was a trump card, that his circumstances, his situation around him said he was able to do it.

Do you know what he says about God’s word then? He says God’s word is flexible. It’s like some of our waistbands this morning; it moves with the belly. He thinks that God’s word can change with the times. The situations that are around him can flex with God’s word. God’s word is not some stable, fixed, concrete absolute, but rather it’s fluid, its flexible. It’s open to “circumstantial interpretation”; that is what I call this. We do this, don’t we? “I know the word of God says, but –”. Then comes our reasoning, our justification for tweaking the word of God, reshaping it, twisting it, not a lot—just a little bit. You know, seven days? Okay, maybe 6.97 days, you know. “But look, I had to do it. I was forced,” he says. Does this sound familiar? Remember, we discussed the icons earlier. The icons began as a way to teach the illiterate, but as time went on they were breaking the very commands of God. You know what the command was? (Exodus 20:4) On Mt.Sinai, he came down with the commands. Remember, one of them was, “Make no graven images. Don’t worship anything but Yahweh the creator.” What were they doing? Statues of apostles and different things began to take prominence. And they became to place them up, and the priest would literally walk around holding the icon, and the people would give “it” reverence, instead of Yahweh. What began as “trying to help out the word of God a little bit” began to replace the word of God. Literally, they said, in these churches that preaching stopped, and it became this ritualistic sacramental kind of worship over just looking at these icons, and worshipping. The Bible was closed and placed aside, replaced by icons.

You know, we may have reasoned with Him. “It’s for the illiterate; we have a good excuse here, a good justification for replacing the word of God. It’s for the illiterate.” How easy it is for us to reason our way out of God’s commands. I want to ask you something. What is going on in our hearts when we do this? What if we were to take off all the armor, all the pretty stuff, and say what is at the core of our being, what do we really believe about God when we begin to replace the word of God with other things? I think it is pretty basic. We believe we are God. We believe somehow that we know better than Yahweh. We think when we say, “We can place this over the word of God (I’m going to give you some illustrations in a minute, in case you are thinking,“I’ve never done that; I don’t even know what you are talking about.” Hold on, I’ll be right there. I’ve got some that will hurt.) But we begin to think that we are God. “Yes, Lord, I know You have done all this stuff,” but we have got Him placed in some throne room, on some marble chair, distant. He doesn’t know what it is like in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He doesn’t know what it is like to be in the ninth grade in 2002, to be in the work place. He doesn’t know, but I do. So I am going to take this and tweak it, and make it fit my “circumstantial interpretation.”

Okay, let me ask you, how do these things apply today? Icons, for example. I am going to make a direct equation from icons to activities. You’re going to find my soap box here in a minute; I’m going to step on it, dance on it, and jump all over it. Icons can equal activities in the church. For example, sermons many times tend to emphasize “to do” lists over “to be” lists. You know what I am talking about. Many sermons today talk about what you are supposed to do. They look to the world for solutions to problems, rather than to the word of God. For example, we place a lot of emphasize in churches on budgets, don’t we? Budgets seem to run a church. Not only budgets, but marketing practices seem to have taken over churches these days. You actually read church growth books, and they call you guys “consumers.” What? In other words, it seems the main goal of a church is to be attractive. Show me that in the Scriptures. Jesus himself said, “The world is going to hate you because of me. Some of the things you’re going to say in my name, the world is going to want to shed your blood over it.” Where do we get that we are supposed to be pretty and attractive. There are even rumors of churches who take the Bibles out of the pews, because they don’t want to offend the seeker coming in there. Hello!

That sounds a lot like Saul doesn’t it? Taking the word of God out and replacing it with his own reasoning, with his own sacrifice. There are many churches that you wonder where the Bible plays a role in their study, because everything they talk about is politics. It’s all about, “If we could just get a Christian senator in Tennessee, if we could just get a Christian governor in Tennessee, if we could just get a Christian president, if we could just get a Christian president in Russia, everything would be better.” Let me tell you, that’s not true. Would it be great? Yes. Do we want Christians in office? Yes. We should vote for Christians, but that is not the solutions of our problems. The gospel is here to tell us that it is an inner problem.

We also do the same thing with education. “If we could just teach our children that premarital sex causes disease, it causes financial stress, it causes emotional problems, if we could just educate them, they will stop.” Do you know it hasn’t slowed down? And in some incidents, some statisticians say that it has sped up. That is what Paul says about the law, by the way. “You tell them not to,” Paul says, “and the principle of the law says that it makes me want to. I didn’t know envy, right. I didn’t know envy until the law told me, “Do not envy?”Then I did what? I envied.

From the pulpit we tend to hear the world’s solutions to our problems, not God’s, not the word of God. What we are saying when we start to engage in this type of activity (and I want you to know it is never black and white like I am saying it); it is always coated. There are Scripture verses, references, pretty people; we all respect all around these kind of agendas. I am confident that many are not aware of the agenda that they are setting for their people. I don’t think they are out to destroy the word of God, but I think that when they look at the world, and look at the word, and try to mix the two, that the word loses—because the word demands complete obedience. It describes itself as the supreme authority. It will share the throne of authority with no one, with nothing. So what we end up doing when we do this, we begin to say, like Saul did, that our decisions outrank God’s. Ugh! Were we ever stupider?

There is a guy who told a story of James VI of Scotland. You understand that worship at this time in Scotland was a big deal when the king would come to worship. He even had his own seating section. He would bring his courtiers, and they would sit in their section in all their glory, and it was a great privilege for the preacher to be able to preach standing, actually, at an elevation higher than the king. (The only time that humans were allowed to do this, by the way, in Scotland was when you were preaching.) Robert Bruce was the preacher one day. Here comes James VI. James VIbegan to talk during the sermon. Don’t know what he was talking about, but Robert Bruce fell silent, took a step back, put his head down, and James quit talking. Robert Bruce stepped back up began to preach the Word again. It happened again. The third time it happened, Robert looks at the king in his eyes, and says this, “It is said to have been an expression of the wisest of kings, when the lion roars all the beast of the field are quiet. The Lion of the tribe of Judah is roaring in the voice of His gospel, and it becomes all petty kings of the earth to be silent.” Who was king? You see, even kings need to be reminded that God’s word is the ultimate authority. But we too often forget who the true King really is in our everyday life.