Judges 13

Chapter 13. Saul, or Self-Life Leading to Destruction1 Samuel 8-15The place of Saul in Old Testament history is significant and, I believe, typical of great spiritual truths. It is conceded that Israel’s redemption from Egypt foreshadowed human redemption through the cross of Calvary. It is also beyond question that the triumph of Joshua and the conquest of Canaan pointed forward to the Pentecostal baptism, the blessing of the apostolic church and the deeper rest into which the Holy Spirit brings the individual Christian. We have already seen that the dark period of declension recorded in Judges and the earlier chapters of Samuel typify the dark ages of Christianity. The reformation under Samuel could be compared to our Protestant Reformation and the revival of the Church from the bondage of medieval darkness and superstition. A little further on we will find that the kingdoms of David and Solomon are representative of Christ’s millennial throne. The Counterfeit King But what was the meaning of the strange parenthesis of Saul’s life? I believe it represents the counterfeit kingdom that Satan is seeking to set upon the throne of human selfishness and worldly pride—the rule of the antichrist. Unfortunately, we have too many evidences in the compromising and worldly ecclesiasticism of our day, and in the Laodicean picture given in Revelation of the church that is to be rejected at the coming of the Lord. But while this is the dispensational meaning of Saul’s life, it has a still more solemn personal application for every Christian. It is God’s fearful object lesson of the power and peril of the self-life and the need of its utter crucifixion before we can enter into the true kingdom of spiritual victory and power. Their Motives We see the spirit of self in the motive that prompted the kingdom of Saul. Samuel recognized it for what it was—a rejection of God as the supreme King of Israel and a vainglorious desire to be independent of divine control and to be like the surrounding nations of the world. “Now appoint a king to lead us,” they said, “such as all the other nations have” (1 Samuel 8:5). No wonder Samuel was deeply displeased. When he prayed to God, God answered, “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king” (1 Samuel 8:7). Nevertheless, Samuel still protested and solemnly warned the Israelites of the burdens and the exactions which a king would bring upon them and the trouble they were bringing upon themselves. “When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day” (1 Samuel 8:18). But Samuel’s warnings were to no avail. The people had set their hearts on having a king: “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Samuel 8:19-20). This is like the spirit of the prodigal son when he told his father to give him his share of the inheritance. It is the desire of independence which is the root of human sin, and it is the spirit of conformity in the Church today. We are conscious of it in our own natural hearts. It is the large, self-asserting and dominant “I” that makes a man a god unto himself and refuses to surrender his will to Christ, or yield the direction of his life to the will of God and the government of the Holy Spirit. The first step, then, in the new life is surrender. The essential condition of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is to yield everything to God, even the things that in themselves may be harmless. Why? For no other reason than to prove our will is wholly laid down and that God is all in all. Saul, the Fleshly Man We see the spirit of self in the character of Saul, in the qualifications that made him the choice and the idol of the people. Saul represented all that was strong, chivalrous, attractive and promising in human nature. He was of splendid physique, a head taller than all the people, a magnificent specimen of physical manhood—“every inch a king.” He possessed the intellectual, moral and social qualities that constitute a leader. He was brave, heroic, enthusiastic and generous, and the early years of his reign were adorned with stirring examples of heroic deeds. He was all that the human heart would choose. He represented the best possibilities of human nature. As the people looked at his splendid figure, they shouted again and again that patriotic cry which has so often re-echoed since, and which has so seldom been fulfilled as a prayer to heaven, “God save the king!” But God had to let Saul stand before the ages to show that man at his best is only man, and that human self-sufficiency must end in failure and sorrow. This is the lesson that God is still trying to teach His children. How few of them have found it out so fully that they can say, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature” (Romans 7:18). The sentence of death has been passed on the flesh, and there is only one thing that we can do with it—nail it to the cross of Jesus Christ, reckon it dead and keep it forever in His bottomless grave. All the Right Qualities The spirit of self in Saul was combined with much that was good and attractive, both naturally and spiritually. Naturally, we have seen that he was not only a man of princely bearing, but one ‘of many noble and heroic qualities. He also had a fine family. His son Jonathan is one of the most attractive figures in the long gallery of Bible characters. When Saul came to Samuel and was first called to the kingdom, he seemed to have many elements of sterling virtue and genuine humilty. Like a dutiful son, he went to search for his father’s donkeys, and then he went to the prophet Samuel to ask counsel about finding them. When he came to Samuel and was told the extraordinary message and anointed to be king, there was no unbecoming self-consciousness about him. He kept his secret with discretion and modesty. Even in telling his uncle about the words of Samuel he said nothing to him about the greater message concerning the kingdom. When he left Samuel he did just what he was told to do. When he met the company of prophets, he joined them and received a baptism of the Spirit and prophesied among them with genuine religious enthusiasm. And even when Samuel told his relatives to bring him forward so that he could present Saul to the people, Saul was hiding among the baggage. He seemed a paragon of modesty and unobtrusiveness. But as we well know, Saul let the dark shadow of self blight his life and ruin his kingdom and his family. How self-deceptive is the human spirit! How pride itself will hide away in the very guise of deepest humility! Later, speaking of Saul’s earlier life, Samuel pays a tribute to Saul’s former humility: “Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel” (1 Samuel 15:17). We cannot doubt that Samuel was sincere in giving Saul credit for a measure of genuine humility. What then was the defect? May it have been this? It is one thing to be little in our own eyes, but it is quite another thing to be out of our own sight altogether. True humility is not thinking little of ourselves; it is not thinking of ourselves at all. What we need is not so much self-denial but self-crucifìxion and complete self-forgetfulness. The perfect child is just as unconscious in the highest place as in the lowest. The true spirit of Christ in us recognizes ourselves as no longer ourselves, but so completely one with the Lord Jesus that we may truly say: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). But what are we to learn from this combination of so many excellencies in one life and its ultimate failure and ruin? That Satan’s cleverest ploy is to mix the good with the bad—to cover his poison as a sugar-coated pill. He knows we would never accept it in its uncovered form. Satan’s choicest agents are those who are attractive and naturally lovely. Esau was more appealing than Jacob, but Jacob was the chosen one. A person can be beautiful, wise, cultured, moral, useful, noble and generous but living for himself or herself, and in the end be self-destroyed like Saul. Satan does not want our souls outright; he only wants a mortgage on them. He is content to take a lien for $1,000 if he cannot get one for $100,000. He can wait for the day of foreclosure. All he wants is to have his hand in it. It is these mixed lives that are doing the mischief. But God says, “Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:17-18) Saul’s First TestThe first test came to Saul in an hour of severe trial when, beleaguered by his enemies and deserted by almost all of his soldiers, he seemed to be facing destruction. Waiting seven days for Samuel to come and begin the battle by the usual sacrificial offering, Saul at last grew discouraged and impatient. Then he presumed to take upon himself the priestly functions which belonged only to Samuel, and to offer up the sacrifice without waiting for the prophet. As he was offering it, Samuel arrived and questioned the king. “What have you done?” asked Samuel. Saul replied, “When I saw that the men were scattering, and that you did not come at the set time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Micmash,… I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering.” “You acted foolishly,” Samuel said. “You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command.” (1 Samuel 13:11-14) Many of us live successful lives while things are going well. But in the hour of trial self always shows through. Saul was a splendid king until that first trial, and then he became discouraged, distrustful, self-asserting and presumptuous, daring to take in his own hands the things that belonged only to God. He usurped the throne of God Himself and showed his true nature. He was a man of his own heart and not of God’s heart. Therefore, God sought out a man after God’s own heart who would do God’s will and not his own, thereby being a true representative of Israel’s true King. Because of Saul’s actions, God showed him how little He needed his strength and wisdom—He used Jonathan and his armorbearer and one sword to defeat the Philistines and show Saul how all-sufficient God is to those who truly trust Him. But Saul missed all this, nearly wrecking the victory God brought by his unthinking interference (1 Samuel 13:23 to 1 Samuel 14:45). After this it became apparent that Saul could not be trusted with God’s work, and that his persistent self-will would always hinder the will of God. Saul’s crisis did not come immediately; God let the spirit of self work out into its full development. It was now evident that Saul’s life would fail, and that Samuel’s prophecy was all too true. The Second Test God gave Saul another opportunity and a second test. He sent him on an important expedition to destroy Amalek, the race of Esau that had tried to hinder Israel in their passage through the wilderness. There is a deep spiritual meaning back of this story: Amalek is a type of the flesh, and it is an illustration of the principle represented by Saul’s life. Saul’s failure to destroy Amalek shows how deeply rooted the self-principle was in his own life. The man who spared Agag was the man who spared the principle of self in his heart. And the two pictures blend with an awful significance for us. Saul successfully accomplished the invasion and returned smugly victorious. He even seems to have been so possessed with the spirit of self-corn-placency that he failed to realize his own true character until Samuel uttered his fearful words of doom. Upon seeing Samuel he said, “The Lord bless you! I have carried out the Lord’s instructions” (1 Samuel 15:13). But the prophet’s words answered him back: “What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?… Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the Lord?” (1 Samuel 15:14, 1 Samuel 15:19). “But I did obey the Lord” (1 Samuel 15:20), Saul maintained, saying that he saved the best of the plunder to sacrifice to God. But Samuel replied, Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king. (1 Samuel 15:22-23) It is doubtful if even then Saul fully realized the nature of his sin. So subtle and self-deceiving is the spirit of self that all he seemed to feel was the fear of being humiliated before the people. He begged the petty bauble of Samuel’s public recognition and honor, and this bit of vainglory was the solace and the comfort of his spirit when the sentence of death and ruin was thundering in his ears. What a spectacle of self-complacency and self-deception! We see the snare of a religious motive, keeping the spoil to sacrifice to the Lord. And we see the fear of man, in the unwillingness of this weak man to displease the people when they begged him to save the precious booty of Amalek. Compromise One word above all others seems to crystallize the very element of Saul’s stupendous folly—compromise. Saul obeyed but with a compromise. He did much good, but he compromised with evil. God’s commands are uncompromising, inexorable and unqualified, and our obedience must be inflexible, absolute and complete. The faintest reservation is really the spirit of disobedience. And the failure to hearken to the full meaning of God indicates a spirit of unwilling obedience. Saul stands before us in this picture as the incarnation of self-will and as such, the enemy of God, even the rival of God upon His throne. Could there be any other issue? “You have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel” (1 Samuel 15:26). God’s Patience Not immediately did the judgment culminate. Slowly still the coil of self unwinds until all its hidden sinuosities have been revealed. Saul accomplished much good work after this; he fought a number of battles—fought them well—reigned over Israel and established a powerful kingdom. But it was Saul’s kingdom, not God’s. All his remaining years were ones of self-activity and self-vindication. For nine of those years he pursued his rival David with ferocious hate. The Spirit of God left him, and an evil spirit—by God’s permission—possessed him. And as the years went on, the beginning and the end of his existence was Saul and not Jehovah. It was self incarnate, with all its miserable works and fruits. The Sad Culmination At last the culmination came. Eaten out by the canker of self, his heart became the dwelling place for Satan. The devil took entire possession of him. In one dreadful hour Saul gave himself up to spiritism and, rejected of the Lord, sought the counsel of a medium, whom he had formerly persecuted and banished from the kingdom. It was his last fatal step. Self had driven God from the throne and had given it to Satan, and the next chapter of the self-life was self-destruction. Trembling and prostrated by the fearful vision which his own presumption had brought up from the depths of hell, Saul rushed with reckless despair into the last battle of his life. The next day the tragedy was complete—the flower of Israel’s youth was lying on the slopes of Gilboa. The army of Saul was annihilated, the Philistines were victorious on every side and the kingdom Saul had built up for a quarter of a century for himself was broken to pieces and scattered to the winds. Even Saul’s sons had been killed, and in the end Saul killed himself. The scorpion self had stung others, and now, at last, it stung itself to death. The revelation of human selfishness was complete. Before this sad and fearful spectacle we may well stand in awe and humbly, earnestly and fervently pray: Oh, to be saved from myself, dear Lord, Oh, to be lost in Thee! Oh, that it might be no more I, But Christ that lives in me.