1 Samuel 13:1-15 (CSB)
Today I want to look at three lessons we can learn from 1 Samuel 13:1-15. It says:
13 Saul was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned forty-two years over Israel. 2 He chose three thousand men from Israel for himself: two thousand were with Saul at Michmash and in Bethel’s hill country, and one thousand were with Jonathan in Gibeah of Benjamin. He sent the rest of the troops away, each to his own tent. 3 Jonathan attacked the Philistine garrison in Gibeah, and the Philistines heard about it. So Saul blew the ram’s horn throughout the land saying, “Let the Hebrews hear!” 4 And all Israel heard the news, “Saul has attacked the Philistine garrison, and Israel is now repulsive to the Philistines.” Then the troops were summoned to join Saul at Gilgal. 5 The Philistines also gathered to fight against Israel: three thousand chariots, six thousand horsemen, and troops as numerous as the sand on the seashore. They went up and camped at Michmash, east of Beth-aven. 6 The men of Israel saw that they were in trouble because the troops were in a difficult situation. They hid in caves, in thickets, among rocks, and in holes and cisterns. 7 Some Hebrews even crossed the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. Saul, however, was still at Gilgal, and all his troops were gripped with fear. 8 He waited seven days for the appointed time that Samuel had set, but Samuel didn’t come to Gilgal, and the troops were deserting him. 9 So Saul said, “Bring me the burnt offering and the fellowship offerings.” Then he offered the burnt offering.
10 Just as he finished offering the burnt offering, Samuel arrived. So Saul went out to greet him, 11 and Samuel asked, “What have you done?”
Saul answered, “When I saw that the troops were deserting me and you didn’t come within the appointed days and the Philistines were gathering at Michmash, 12 I thought, ‘The Philistines will now descend on me at Gilgal, and I haven’t sought the Lord’s favor.’ So I forced myself to offer the burnt offering.”
13 Samuel said to Saul, “You have been foolish. You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you. It was at this time that the Lord would have permanently established your reign over Israel, 14 but now your reign will not endure. The Lord has found a man after his own heart, and the Lord has appointed him as ruler over his people, because you have not done what the Lord commanded.” 15 Then Samuel went from Gilgal to Gibeah in Benjamin. Saul registered the troops who were with him, about six hundred men.
Before we get into the three lessons, we first need to understand why Saul was punished for giving a burnt offering to the Lord. To give you a little background on this event, we have to go back a little further in 1 Samuel. After Samuel had anointed Saul king, Samuel gave him some specific directives. One of those directives was that Saul was to go to a city and wait for him. He says to Saul in 1 Samuel 10:8, “Afterward, go ahead of me to Gilgal. I will come to you to offer burnt offerings and to sacrifice fellowship offerings. Wait seven days until I come to you and show you what to do.”
From our text for today, we see that when Saul arrived in Gilgal, he waited the seven days, like Samuel said, but then he took matters into his own hands. He obeyed the first part of the directive, but not the second. Samuel had said, ‘wait for me, then once I’m there, then I will show you what to do.’ Saul waited, but he didn’t wait long enough, and he certainly didn’t wait to listen to what Samuel might tell him to do. This action Saul took is a turning point in his life, because it is then that God tells him that his reign will not endure. Samuel says to Saul, “The Lord has found a man after his own heart, and the Lord has appointed him as ruler over his people, because you have not done what the Lord commanded.”
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this passage which we can apply to our lives today, but I want to focus on just three:
-If we want to follow God, we must obey Him
-Following God requires faith
-If we don’t follow God, we will miss out on His blessings
Let’s look at that first lesson: if we want to follow God, we must obey Him. Though modern Christianity might tell you otherwise, obedience to God is not optional. Saul did a good thing: he offered a burnt offering to the Lord. He even told Samuel the reason he made the offering was because he hadn’t sought the Lord’s favor, and he knew he needed to do so. Yet, he was severely punished: the crown was taken from him and his decedents. All because he performed an action that, at other times, we see is welcomed and rewarded by the Lord.
If you know Scripture well, you might recall how King David offers a similar sacrifice to the Lord and is praised for it. Have you ever wondered why King David was allowed to offer the sacrifice when King Saul was punished for doing so? If you don’t know what I’m referring to, David offered a burnt offering, and he was not a priest either. In 2 Samuel 24:18-25, we read the story. It says:
“Gad came to David that day and said to him, ‘Go up and set up an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.’ David went up in obedience to Gad’s command, just as the Lord had commanded. Araunah looked down and saw the king and his servants coming toward him, so he went out and paid homage to the king with his face to the ground.
Araunah said, ‘Why has my lord the king come to his servant?’
David replied, ‘To buy the threshing floor from you in order to build an altar to the Lord, so the plague on the people may be halted.’
Araunah said to David, ‘My lord the king may take whatever he wants and offer it. Here are the oxen for a burnt offering and the threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. Your Majesty, Araunah gives everything here to the king.’ Then he said to the king, ‘May the Lord your God accept you.’
The king answered Araunah, ‘No, I insist on buying it from you for a price, for I will not offer to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.’ David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for twenty ounces of silver. He built an altar to the Lord there and offered burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord was receptive to prayer for the land, and the plague on Israel ended.”
I don’t know why the Lord told the prophet Gad to have David give the offering, considering he wasn’t a priest, but the difference between Saul and David is God told David to offer the sacrifice. David acted out of obedience to God’s word to him through the prophet Gad. This is the opposite of Saul. He directly disobeyed the Lord’s word to him. He was supposed to wait 7 days for Samuel to show up and then Samuel was to make the offering. Saul waited the minimum amount of time, but then, without waiting for Samuel, went ahead and gave the sacrifice. Even though Saul did a good thing, Saul was not following God, for he acted in direct disobedience to the Lord.
That tells me we must be very careful to obey the Lord’s Word. For even if we do something that is good, but it goes against God’s directive, then it is disobedience. If we want to follow God, we must obey Him.
The second lesson to be learned is that following God requires faith. Just as obedience is not optional, neither is faith. If we want to follow God, we must have faith in Him. Faith is not optional. Hebrews 11:6 tells us, “Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”
Not only must we believe He exists, but our actions will prove our faith in God. If we have faith, then we will trust Him, wait for His help and provision, and believe His Word. The Bible gives us many examples of people who had great faith in God, and they waited on the Lord to help them.
I think Saul, though, did not show faith in God. He says to Samuel that the reason he made the offering was because he wanted God’s help, but I think he acted on his own because he was afraid. If he had faith, he would have waited to hear from God. But ultimately, I don’t think he wanted to hear from the Lord, he just wanted God to do what he wanted God to do for him. He wasn’t interested in hearing what the Lord might say to him. If he was interested, he would have waited for Samuel to show up and tell him what to do next. It was proof of Saul’s lack of faith.
I wonder if we aren’t guilty of doing that same thing sometimes. We have a need, and we want the Lord to help us, but instead of waiting for His timing, we get impatient. We get tired of waiting to see what the Lord will do, and so we act, even though we know it’s going against His word. Other times, I think we want Him to come through for us in a specific way, and so sometimes we take matters into our hands, thinking we know what He would say to us, and so we act as if He’s spoken to us when He hasn’t yet. How do we know what God wants us to do, since God doesn’t often send prophets to speak to us? We have to turn to His Word. In the Bible, He has clearly laid out for us the right way to live and behave. Scripture is the first place we should look for guidance from God when we need it—which, to be honest, should be on a daily basis if we desire to follow Him.
Learning to wait for God’s timing is a vital part of following the Lord. In my life, it’s a lesson I’ve found I need to learn over and over again. If faith were a coin, waiting and action would be the two sides of the coin of faith. Sometimes faith means stepping out in trust, sometimes faith means waiting in the darkness. Always, faith is relying on God to come through when He has said that He will.
A question that God has asked me before is this: If I never did anything else for you, would I still be enough? In other words, can I still have faith in God, even if it looks like He has abandoned me? Can we obey Him, even when it looks like He’s not going to come through for us? Will we hold out in faith even when it seems like He’s forgotten us? Will we keep our faith in His goodness even when it looks like He’s overlooked us?
The truth is, if we don’t lose our faith, He will show up. He will keep His promises. He will be true to His Word. All we have to do is hold on to our faith in Him. If we do that, then will see His faithfulness.
Which leads us to the last lesson, which is: if we don’t follow God, we will miss out on His blessings. King Saul did not follow God’s directive to him. He did not obey nor wait for His timing. He took matters into his own hands, and because of that, he missed out on God’s blessing.
We see more examples of the dangers of taking matter into our hands, all throughout the Bible. One example I thought of is Sarah. She and Abraham were promised that they would have children who would become too numerous to count. They heard the promise, and they waited for this to happen. It didn’t happen according to their preferred timeline though, so Sarah, tired of waiting, took matters into her own hands, and gave her maid-servant to her husband. The maidservant became pregnant. This set in motion a chain rection of devastating consequences. Eventually, Sarah, too, became pregnant, but what if she had simply waited? How much better would everything had gone?
Just as we saw with Sarah’s lack of faith in not waiting, we see there were negative consequences for her. And we see the negative consequences for Saul. The same is true for us. If we don’t follow God, it’s only reasonable that there will be negative consequences. If we want to experience God’s blessings, then we must follow His directives in our lives; we must obey Him and have faith in Him, waiting on His timing and trusting in Him.
With Saul, his lack of obedience cost him, and his children, the throne. Verse 14 tells us, “but now your reign will not endure. The Lord has found a man after his own heart, and the Lord has appointed him as ruler over his people, because you have not done what the Lord commanded.”
It seems that many of us, including myself, have misinterpreted the meaning of the phrase “a man after his own heart.” I think most of us have taken that verse to mean that David is the one who is the “man after God’s heart.” We look then at David’s life and conclude that his heart is repentant after he sins, he seeks the Lord, he offers sacrifices; all that proves he is a man whose heart is like God’s. Yet, I’m not sure that is an accurate translation of those words. If you look at the Hebrew, it seems more accurate to say, “Yahweh has sought for himself a man he has decided on.” This is the way John Goldingay has translated it in his book, 1&2 Samuel for Everyone. He writes that the translations that say “a man after God’s own heart” are technically accurate, but that “The English expression sounds as if it implies someone who has the kind of character that pleases God, even someone whose own heart matches God’s heart. Actually it needs to mean only someone whom God’s heart is set on, someone God chooses. Indeed, Saul had been such a person; God had decided on him. God is now going to decide on someone else” (p.68).
I would like to clarify one point, though. Rather than God changing HIs mind on Saul, I think God let the people have Saul, and now God was going to make His choice. And in choosing David, He chose someone He knew would seek after Him. I don’t think it was so much God changing His mind, but rather letting the people have their choice, and now He was going to have His choice. If you remember, God did not want the people to have a king, but they insisted. They wanted to be like everybody else around them and have a temporal king to rule over them. God warned them it would end badly for them, but they didn’t care. They wanted a king. So Saul was given to them. We can read about this earlier in 1 Samuel 8:6-9, which says, “When they said, ‘Give us a king to judge us,’ Samuel considered their demand wrong, so he prayed to the Lord. But the Lord told him, ‘Listen to the people and everything they say to you. They have not rejected you; they have rejected me as their king. They are doing the same thing to you that they have done to me, since the day I brought them out of Egypt until this day, abandoning me and worshiping other gods. Listen to them, but solemnly warn them and tell them about the customary rights of the king who will reign over them.’”
Then we see that God told Samuel to pick Saul to anoint as king, and so yes, you could argue that God still chose Saul, and that would be true. But that was not God’s first choice. He didn’t want them to have a king, and now that Saul has failed to obey him, God is going to pick a different man, one according to His own heart. I think “according to His own heart” changes the meaning a bit, doesn’t it? Reading the translation in Young’s Literal Translation it says: 1 Sam 13:14 (YLT), “and, now, thy kingdom doth not stand, Jehovah hath sought for Himself a man according to His own heart, and Jehovah chargeth him for leader over His people, for thou hast not kept that which Jehovah commanded thee.’”
We see this same wording in Acts 13: 22 (YLT), which says, “and having removed him, He did raise up to them David for king, to whom also having testified, he said, I found David, the son of Jesse, a man according to My heart, who shall do all My will.”
In both references, the YLT uses the word ‘according’, rather than the traditional ‘after’. I think this shows that the issue is more of God’s choosing rather than David’s quality. Nevertheless, I think that both the issue of God's choice and David’s character is linked. But why is this important to point out that David wasn’t chosen because he was a man after God’s heart, but rather that God chose according to His heart or rather, His choice? I think it’s important to note because David was a deeply flawed man, yet God chose to make him king and bring Jesus through his lineage. I think there is a danger in elevating David and painting him as the model follower of God. If you know his whole story, you know that isn’t true. Where he does serve as a faithful model, though, is in his readiness to repent and seek forgiveness and change. We see that modeled by David in his many Psalms he wrote; crying out to God to forgive him and wash him clean from his sin. We see that, too, in his obedience to follow God’s directives to him, like in this contrast with Saul and giving a burnt offering to God.
David understood something that I don’t think Saul understood. David knew that God loved him. He knew that God loved him so much that He would forgive him and cleanse him of his wrongdoing. The reason we should want to follow God, obey Him, have faith in Him and His timing, is not only so we avoid negative consequences or receive blessing from Him. The reason we should trust God is because He loves us. If we can understand just how much God loves us, I think then we will want to follow Him and obey Him. We will more easily trust that we can wait for His timing. If Saul had known that God loves Him and cares for Him, then maybe he would have found it easier to follow God.
David prays in Psalm 51:1, “Be gracious to me, God, according to your faithful love; according to your abundant compassion, blot out my rebellion.” David prays, knowing that God is full of faithful love toward him. We never see Saul saying such words as these. Saul did not know that God is loving and compassionate. He had been anointed king, had even been filled with the Spirit of God and had prophesied, but he didn’t follow God. He was neither obedient nor filled with faith, and because of that, he was not blessed, but suffered the consequences. Saul didn’t know God, or he would have followed Him. He would have obeyed His word to him to wait for Samuel to show up. He would have trusted that God would come through for him. He wouldn’t have tried to take matters into his own hands. Maybe he thought that he knew better than the Lord. Or maybe he thought that the Lord had forgotten him.
Like I said earlier, I wonder if that isn’t our same trouble. Rather than obeying what God tells us to do, we make the decision for ourselves. Rather than waiting for God to show up, we go ahead and act, even though He has told us to do something else. If we do that, I think we must either think we know better than God, or we don’t realize just how much God loves us. Maybe we even think that He has forgotten about us.
In the US, it’s Mother’s day today, and so I am reminded of a Bible verse. Isaiah 49:15 gives us this promise. It says, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the child of her womb? Even if these forget, yet I will not forget you.” Isaiah was prophesying these words of the Lord to Zion, but they reflect God’s heart for each of His children. Even a mother might forget her child, but the Lord will never forget us.
I would like to ask you a question. Do you believe God loves you and wants the best for you? It’s hard to follow someone whom you don’t think has your best interest at heart. But God does love you. He cares for you so much that He sacrificed Himself on the cross for not just the whole world, but for you personally. He has not forgotten you. In Matthew 10:29-30, Jesus tells us, “Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s consent. But even the hairs of your head have all been counted.” If God loves the little sparrow, just think about how much more the Lord loves you. Let us not be afraid to follow Him. Let us hold tight to His Word, trusting and waiting for His provision and timing. He will come through for us, as surely as the dawn arrives each morning.
Pray: Heavenly Father, we praise You and thank You for Your great love for us. Please forgive us when we disregard Your word or fail to wait for Your timing. Holy Spirit, please guide us as we follow and trust in You. We love You. And in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
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