Preconceived Resentments

In my opinion the number 1 reason why people leave church, never come to church, judge church or reject church is unfulfilled expectations. In this process of evaluation often the last thing they examine are their expectations. I find this all completely reasonable and nothing I’ve ever read in the Bible causes me to doubt it.

The church surrounds itself with talk and ideas that raise enormous expectations. We declare that God is in this place. We believe that the church is the first fruits of the kingdom of heaven, on earth as it is in heaven. We say that we are a “new creation” but then when you look around at how we are we look pretty much like “the same old same old”.

The Human Factor

So we often just attribute the messiness of church to the human factor. People are like this, but today we are reading a text from 1 Samuel 9 about God’s pick for Israel’s brand new political idea for how to be free and make their dreams come true.

It seems at the beginning of 1 Samuel 9 that Samuel was hoping that after the call for a king that maybe Israel would forget about it. God, it seems, wouldn’t leave it alone. Samuel made zero effort to go find one after dismissing the elders.

Biblical Introductions

Robert Alter, one of the best readers of the OT text notes that introductions and first words are important in Biblical literature and no place is this clearer than with our introduction to Saul.

• He’s from a distinguished and probably wealthy family
• He’s tall and handsome
• He’s dumber than the donkeys he’s lost and less capable than the servant his father probably sent with him so that bad things wouldn’t happen.

His first words are

1 Samuel 9:5 (NIV)

⁵ When they reached the district of Zuph, Saul said to the servant who was with him, “Come, let’s go back, or my father will stop thinking about the donkeys and start worrying about us.”

So right away we begin to wonder “what is God up to? Did he decide to sabotage the effort to shift to a king?”

This might lead us to wonder “are all the mess ups we see in the church also attributable to God?”

The story gets worse.

Saul gets a “meeting women at the well” scene which in terms of Old Testament type scenes the hero (Isaac, Jacob, Moses) usually comes up with a wife. Saul, who strolls in with his tall handsome self gets nothing more out of it except a set of directions which he seems clueless to follow.

God won’t Let Samuel Out of It

It seems that God is engineering this whole thing and he simply won’t let Samuel out of it. He takes Samuel aside, gives him explicit instructions, and sets him to do what he’s called him to do.

Samuel will anoint Saul, send him back to Gibeah with some signs, near the Philistine outpost and then God will change his heart. After that he’ll go do a sacrifice at Gilgal. He will go home and not tell his inquiring uncle what happened.

Things go mostly according to plan. The episode of Saul and the Spirit of God is a eerily similar to Samson’s story. Didn’t Samson deliver Israel?

He will show up at Mizpah but then hide in the baggage, where God again has to intervene to finish the deal. Some stout men will follow Saul but others will kvetch.

What does all this mean?

The Mysterious Hand of God both Plays on and Defies our Expectations

• The Elders want a king
• Samuel opposes the idea. God sees it as rebellion but relents.
• Samuel drags his feet while God facilitates what he calls rebellion while also, deeply, working his plan.
• Saul is exactly what Israel thinks it wants and needs, but will also be exactly the consequences of its rebellion.
• God will work through this to eventually bring about his will through history.

Saul is Revealed in the Story

• Saul begins as a kind, good-hearted by rather dim hero. He is an innocent. We are invited to compare him to Samson. He is more innocent but equally naive.
• Saul himself is clearly not up to the task but like Samson God will empower him by his Spirit to achieve the specifics of what God wants to do.
• In Saul we will see success in exactly the areas that the Elders were looking for, but tragedy in exactly the areas God and Samuel had predicted.

Misery

Israel’s story in the Old Testament is in many ways a tragedy.

• We just saw a glimmer of light through Samuel but then we descend into the same dilemma of Eli and his sons.
• The big idea to rescue project Israel comes from empire and Israel seems bound to repeat the story of the larger world.

In this we see Israel’s cruciform mission. Israel is indeed a priest. She embodies the world in the sight of God, and she bears witness to God in the sight of the world. Israel is the burning bush, always seemingly being consumed but not actually consumed.

Deliverance

Is there hope in the text? Let’s pause at this end of the story.

1 Samuel 10:25–27 (NIV)

²⁵ Samuel explained to the people the rights and duties of kingship. He wrote them down on a scroll and deposited it before the Lord. Then Samuel dismissed the people to go to their own homes. ²⁶ Saul also went to his home in Gibeah, accompanied by valiant men whose hearts God had touched. ²⁷ But some scoundrels said, “How can this fellow save us?” They despised him and brought him no gifts. But Saul kept silent.

I’m letting go of some spoilers here but since the text has been around a while you shouldn’t hold me to keeping too many secrets about Saul’s outcome.

Saul will become a tyrant who observes no boundaries. He will sacrifice on his own, or not. He will take life when it suits him, or refuse to take life when God commands. He will not be in control of himself and his out-of-control self will be a plague to Israel.

Earlier in this story Samuel has to goad Saul into action. He’s reticent, hesitant, unsure of himself, always pausing, never acting. Only when God’s Spirit comes upon him does he act.

Here in this scene we Saul’s reticence ambiguously.

• Is he being wise to not overplay his hand? Something that he will do compulsively later in his life.
• Is it is character flaw? Should he instead assert his authority and punish those scoundrels for their insubordination?

It is probably at this moment in the story that I most see Jesus in Saul. We of course will see Jesus in David much more clearly later on, but here, perhaps, even in Saul.

We see the Son of Man with his cadre of devoted misfits surrounded by those who mock him because of their unbelief in his capacity to save. They offer him no gifts besides their whips and their spittle.

• Saul will triumph for a moment and then slide into catastrophe taking Israel with him.
• Jesus will fail for a moment and then slide into victory taking new-Israel with him.

Gratitude

• What to do with this expectation defying God?
• What to do with this God who not only fails to necessarily give us what we ask for, even the good things, or even sometimes give us what we feel we need?
• How can we worship or engage a God that even when we’re trying to track his plan (yes or no on king, yes or no on Saul, etc.) we can’t figure out if this crazy path he’s leading us on will bring us the kind of flourishing we need?

They key to gratitude is believing in the Savior even when we don’t understand what we are seeing him do. The key is trusting on what he has done already, specifically in the resurrection, and believing that he is just as much the Lord of history we see working with Israel as he is with your life.

If this is true we can gratefully respond not just to good things that come our way but also hard things. We can be patient when things are hard, and grateful when times are good. We can with patience sometimes stay silent when others around us fall into despair knowing and trusting that our God is in control and will in the end do more and better than our small expectational plans can achieve.

Lord’s Day 10

Q & A 27

¹ Jer. 23:23-24; Acts 17:24-28
² Heb. 1:3
³ Jer. 5:24; Acts 14:15-17/a>; John 9:3; Prov. 22:2
⁴ Prov. 16:33
⁵ Matt. 10:29

Q & A 28

¹ Job 1:21-22; James 1:3
² Deut. 8:10; 1 Thess. 5:18
³ Ps. 55:22; Rom. 5:3-5; 8:38-39
⁴ Job 1:12; 2:6; Prov. 21:1; Acts 17:24-28