The Pride of Saul, Who Offered the Sacrifice

Proverbs 20:11 says that even children make themselves known by what they do, whether their conduct is pure and whether it is right. Watch how a child behaves, and you can tell what kind of character they have. Adults, too, find it hard to hide what they carry in their hearts. Our feelings show plainly on our faces, and as we express them in what we do, we shape our own lives. Wrongdoing and good deeds alike come to light in the end, even if we try to hide them, because the way a person acts is their character, and character cannot be concealed. When a young child comes in from playing outside, a mother can tell at once whether the child played happily at the playground or got into a fight. However hard the child tries to fool her, she knows her child well and can discern accurately; in the same way, God sees into the hearts of his people, and he is never deceived. One day, when we stand before God, our own life will be the evidence, and we will not be able to tell him a lie. That is why we must live each day well, and only when we build a character worth treasuring, one that masters its feelings at every moment, will our lives be beautiful.

Proverbs 16:1-2 says that the plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue comes from Yahweh. A person’s ways may all look clean in their own eyes, but Yahweh weighs the heart, and so he discerns good from evil.

We can accomplish nothing without God, so if we commit all our works to Yahweh, we will be able to accomplish what we set out to do. To entrust our plans to God is the faith that acknowledges his wisdom and power. When children handle some matter as they please without consulting their parents, it is because they look down on their parents or do not trust them. Problems that could easily be solved by asking a parent are sometimes made harder by children who cannot see what lies ahead.

If we say we respect our parents but our actions do not follow, those words are a lie made up for our own advantage. In the same way, if we say we fear God but do not live by his word, our confession is a lie, so our words and our deeds must match. Only then will we be trusted by people, by the world, and by God, and be able to carry more of the work he entrusts to us and enjoy his blessing. Those who never act but only keep making resolutions, and those whose feelings change easily, cannot win recognition, and life alongside them is wearisome; so you should always strive to be a person of consistency.

At first Saul showed himself diligent, humble, and obedient. When God called him by name, he humbly hid among the baggage, and when Samuel anointed him, he obeyed. But after winning the war against the Ammonites with God’s help, once he gained the people’s confidence, he grew proud, as if the victory had come from his own ability. Seeing such a king and such a people, Samuel rebuked them and urged them to serve God in truth with all their heart. When God shows us grace and answers our prayers, every one of us resolves to live by faith; how sad it is, then, that as time passes we forget to give thanks. God called us, raised us up, and gave us strength to win; yet when we forget all of it, we cannot help but go the way of evil. Saul’s great victory over the Ammonites came from God’s desire to establish him fully as king. If we forget that love of God and grow proud, we will be rebuked.

When Saul had reigned two years, he chose three thousand men of Israel for himself; two thousand he kept as his guard, and the other thousand he stationed with Jonathan at Gibeah. You will remember that when Saul was called to be king, the third prophecy spoke of a garrison of the Philistines at Gibeah. The war began when Jonathan, with the thousand soldiers Saul had given him, attacked the Philistine garrison.

The people were afraid at the news of war, but Saul seized on Jonathan’s attack as an opportunity and ordered the Hebrews to gather quickly. When Saul calls Israel “Hebrews” here, the word goes back to Abram crossing the Euphrates and entering Canaan, the Promised Land. The name “Hebrew” means “to cross over the river.” By crossing the Jabbok, the Red Sea, and the Jordan, Israel made that name come true in the history of the Hebrews.

In verse 4, when the Israelites realized that war with the Philistines could not be avoided, they all gathered at Gilgal to follow Saul. For the battle the Philistines mustered thirty thousand chariots and six thousand horsemen, and their soldiers were as many as the sand on the seashore. They camped at Michmash, east of Beth Aven, a name that means “house of wickedness.” When Israel saw the chariots, horsemen, and troops of the Philistines, they were afraid and hid in caves, in thickets, and among the rocks.

Hosea 10:5

5The inhabitants of Samaria will be in terror for the calves of Beth Aven; for its people will mourn over it, Along with its priests who rejoiced over it, for its glory, because it has departed from it.

In this verse, Bethel, the house of God, has sunk into a place of idol worship, and so it came to be called Beth Aven, in scorn of the faith practiced there. Whether Bethel, once the house of God, becomes Beth Aven is decided by the faith of God’s people. It is the same with us: when the Holy Spirit comes upon your spirit you are a Christian, and when Satan rules over you, you become a beast. Whether you will be a Bethel or a Beth Aven, your life, which has received God’s grace, will decide.

The Philistines held a wide territory and were armed with many weapons and soldiers, but Israel had neither weapons nor trained troops. From the start this was no contest. At a time when the Israelites had lost the will to fight at the sight of the Philistines’ overwhelming might and were busy hiding, Saul was at Gilgal, waiting anxiously for Samuel so that he could offer sacrifice to God.

In verse 8 Saul waited for Samuel the appointed time, but when Samuel did not come, he had the burnt offering and the peace offerings brought, and he offered the burnt offering himself. But just as Saul finished the sacrifice, Samuel arrived. Samuel asked the king what he had done. Saul answered that the people were scattering out of fear of the Philistines, that Samuel had not come within the appointed days, and that with the battle against the Philistines about to begin, the situation was so urgent that he had no choice but to offer the sacrifice himself. From what the two of them say, it seems that Saul had asked Samuel to come to Gilgal and offer the sacrifice to God.

The burnt offering and peace offerings had to be made to God to give faith to a people who were scattering, and when Samuel did not come at the promised time, the king offered the sacrifice himself. To hear Saul tell it, the whole fault lay with Samuel. Of course, with the people scattering and the Philistine army coming up against him, we can well understand how impatient he was. As Saul said, the nation was in danger; it stood on the brink, and many of the people might be killed. In a situation like that, anyone might have done what Saul did.

If you were Saul, what would you decide? Every one of us has a deadline of our own. We fix it in advance, telling God he must help by this date or at least this far, and we pray for an answer. Then, if he does not grant it by the time we set, we reach the absurd decision on our own that we may do as we please. Saul too, in his impatience, feared that God would not help unless the sacrifice was made by the time he had set, and so the king offered the sacrifice that was the priest’s to offer.

Those who always make excuses when trouble comes keep on sinning. In just that way Saul kept shifting the blame onto Samuel, pleading that it had happened because of Samuel and insisting that he himself was not at fault. If only Saul had honestly confessed his wrong decision to God and Samuel and repented, God and Samuel would have helped him. God’s law always comes before the time Saul set. Saul broke it, and did what must never be done. It is God who decides to help people and answer them. God does not act simply because a person has made a decision. To rely on God completely is true faith, and if we have decided wrongly by human reasoning, the wise thing is to repent at once.

In verse 13, when Samuel told the king that he had done foolishly, he meant that Saul had acted foolishly because he did not truly fear God. Samuel was rebuking him: had he tried to keep the command God gave him as king, he would not have committed the sin of overstepping the limits of his office. Saul knew that sacrifice was Samuel’s prerogative alone, but he could not overcome his fear of the world, and so he sinned.

Samuel had clearly prophesied that if they did not fear God and serve him faithfully with all their heart, both they and their king would be consumed. Saul heard that prophecy, yet he did not fear God; that is why his kingdom did not last. From the world’s point of view, one could take this event as Saul offering sacrifice to God in order to protect his nation. He had not asked a foreign nation for help, nor sacrificed to an idol; he had only offered the sacrifice because Samuel did not come and he had no other choice. One might well think the curse that his kingdom would not last was far too harsh. But what matters is whether Saul obeyed God’s law. We must understand that if we do not know God rightly, we can offer sacrifices and still be rejected. If God had laid down in his law that he would receive sacrifice only through the priest, then he would have protected Israel even if Samuel had not come. He is not, after all, a God who guards Israel only once he has been given a sacrifice. Had Israel trusted God to the end, the outcome would have been different.

But the people who saw Saul offer the sacrifice would have thought it only natural for the king to do so, since Samuel had not come, and they would have assumed that now the sacrifice was made, God would help them. Even if people approve, though, it counts for nothing unless God approves, because if we cannot tell whether we acted on our own ideas or on God’s word, we will never walk the way of truth. If you stop for a moment to think about who is receiving the sacrifice Saul offered, you will easily see what sin he committed.

In verse 22, the battle with the Philistines had to be fought at once, but only Saul and Jonathan had weapons. This was the result of a Philistine policy of monopolizing iron so that Israel could not have weapons. When the people have no weapons, the war is lost before it is fought. Whatever effort Israel made, there was no way to defeat the Philistines when only Saul and Jonathan were armed.

When Israel was conquering Canaan, God said in Deuteronomy 20:20 that they should cut down the trees that were not fruit trees and use them as weapons until the city that fought against them fell. God, who knew that Canaan already had chariots of iron, commanded them to make weapons out of wood and go to war. Does a God like this make sense to you? He was telling them not to care what weapons the enemy had or how many they were, but to go into battle against them with wooden swords. Faced with such a God, the faith of his people would be shaken. To churchgoers whose faith says that strength means getting on in the world, a God who tells them to make wooden swords will make no sense. Their honest feeling would be that they want nothing to do with a God like that.

But if we believe in the God who makes us victorious even when we have nothing, then, not knowing where he will use those wooden swords, we will make them diligently and entrust our lives to him. Today, though, Christians will not listen even to God’s word if it does not help them get ahead in life, because they hold the worldly idea that God, if he is God, ought to lift them up. But we must understand that God does not choose people like this.

Saul did not have an absolute faith in God. His failure to trust the God who made him king, though he came from Benjamin, the smallest of all the tribes, meant that he needed to repent thoroughly, for only then could he receive God’s forgiveness and grace. Anyone who abandons the God who called them when they were the least of all and set them in the highest place, and who acts as though they had become king by their own ability, will be stripped of all the grace and power they received from God. In the end, Saul’s foolish behavior drove his sons to their death.

Let Saul be a mirror for you; I hope you will hold a faith that is true and upright. Even if the enemy is armed with chariots and horsemen, only the faith that trusts the God who stands above all their power can receive blessing. May you always obey the word and persevere until God works. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.

1 Samuel 14:6-15

6Jonathan said to the young man who bore his armor, “Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that Yahweh will work for us; for there is no restraint on Yahweh to save by many or by few.” 7His armor bearer said to him, “Do all that is in your heart. Turn and, behold, I am with you according to your heart.” 8Then Jonathan said, “Behold, we will pass over to the men, and we will reveal ourselves to them. 9If they say thus to us, ‘Wait until we come to you!’ then we will stand still in our place, and will not go up to them. 10But if they say this, ‘Come up to us!’ then we will go up; for Yahweh has delivered them into our hand. This shall be the sign to us.” 11Both of them revealed themselves to the garrison of the Philistines: and the Philistines said, “Behold, the Hebrews are coming out of the holes where they had hidden themselves!” 12The men of the garrison answered Jonathan and his armor bearer, and said, “Come up to us, and we will show you something!” Jonathan said to his armor bearer, “Come up after me; for Yahweh has delivered them into the hand of Israel.” 13Jonathan climbed up on his hands and on his feet, and his armor bearer after him: and they fell before Jonathan; and his armor bearer killed them after him. 14That first slaughter, which Jonathan and his armor bearer made, was about twenty men, within as it were half a furrow’s length in an acre of land. 15There was a trembling in the camp, in the field, and among all the people; the garrison, and the raiders, also trembled; and the earth quaked, so there was an exceedingly great trembling.