Week 15 - Reading the Bible in a Year with Pastor Schultz and Gerhard's Sacred Meditations
Sometimes Things Don't Work Out the Way You Hoped
The transition from Saul to David is quite the little story. Trouble really begins for Saul in 1 Samuel 13 when he gives an unlawful sacrifice to the Lord. Samuel gives Saul quite the scolding: “You have done foolishly.” That might not sound like much, but when you consider the weight of the insult to be called a fool and the fact that you are insulting a king, this is no small thing. Saul shows he does not have good judgment again when he makes the people promise not to eat on a day they were in a battle. His son didn’t hear about the oath and so he ate some wild honey. The people of Israel, in order to prevent Saul from executing his son for breaking the oath, said to Saul, “Shall Jonathan die, who has worked this great salvation in Israel? Far from it! So, the people ransomed Jonathan.”
Things just keep going down from here for Saul. He goes to battle against the Amalekites and he was supposed to take no plunder and provide no quarter for the enemy. But Saul captured the king of the Amalekites, spared the best of the sheep, oxen, calves, and lambs. Anything that was good, they kept, contrary to the command God had given.
When Samuel goes out to confront Saul, Saul greets him, “Blessed be you to the LORD. I have performed the commandment of the LORD.”
Then Samuel has one of the best zingers in the Old Testament: “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear.”
Saul blames the people, but the LORD and His prophet see through the rouse. Samuel says that because Saul rejected the LORD and His Word, the LORD was rejecting Saul from being king.
Saul asks for Samuel to go with him. Samuel says no and as he is walking away, Saul grabs at Samuel’s robe and it tears. Then Samuel has another great zinger: “The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you.”
Then Samuel went and took care of Agag, the king of the Amalekites.
Quite a day, huh?
The most human moment of chapter 15 comes right at the end: “And Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul.”
Saul’s story is a tragedy of greed and hubris. But it is more than that. It shows us the bitter consequence for not hearing and believing God’s Word. Saul is a warning. As one of God’s children, you are called to faithful obedience to His Word. When we neglect the Word of God, we imperil our soul.
Saul’s story from the point of view of Samuel is a story of faithfulness and sadness. Samuel’s ministry to Saul and Saul’s failure as king broke Samuel. He wept over Saul and for the people of Israel. Faithfulness to God’s Word doesn’t mean everything is going to go smoothly. Sometimes, it will seem like it can’t get much worse.
But there is hope. The Lord was preparing David, a man after God’s own heart, to be the king of His people. From David would come one whom David would call Lord, Christ Jesus.
When we examine ourselves and find that we have sinned against God and His Word, we are called to confession and faith that God truly is merciful and gracious. Yes, we will still face earthly consequences for our sin, but the debt that is held against us because of our Sin against God, Christ Jesus took upon himself, nailing it to the cross. Through Christ, you are free of your sin and you are granted life eternal.
Readings
4/10 - 1 Samuel 9-12
4/11 - 1 Samuel 13-14
4/12 - 1 Samuel 15-17
4/13 - 1 Samuel 18-20, Psalm 11, 59
4/14 - 1 Samuel 21-24
4/15 - Psalm 7, 27, 31, 34, 52
MEDITATION XV
THE SAVING BENEFITS OF CHRIST’S INCARNATION
Let us be deeply grateful for the Redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
“BEHOLD, I bring you good tidings of great joy” (Luke 2:10), said the angel at the birth of our Saviour. Great indeed is the joy thus announced, aye, greater than the human mind can conceive. It was a dreadful thing for us to lie under the holy wrath of God, to be led captive by the devil at his will, and to be under sentence of eternal condemnation; but it was still more dreadful that men were ignorant of their awful condition, or utterly indifferent to it. And now the angel brings the good tidings that He hath come into the world who will free us from all these evils. He came as the Physician to the spiritually sick, as the Redeemer to the captives of sin, as the Way to those who had wandered afar off, as the Life to the dead in trespasses and sins, and as a Saviour to the lost. As Moses (Ex. 3:10) was sent by the Lord to deliver the Israelites from the bondage of Egypt, so was Christ sent by the Father to redeem mankind from the bondage of the devil. As the dove, after the waters of the flood had abated from the face of the earth, brought back an olive leaf to Noah in the ark (Gen. 8:11), so Christ came to earth to preach peace and reconciliation between man and God. Well may we rejoice, then, and magnify the mercy of our God. What good thing will He, who loved us while we were yet His enemies (Rom. 5:8), disdaining not to take our human nature into the very closest union with His divinity, withhold from those who are partakers with Him of the same flesh? Who has ever hated His own flesh (Eph. 5:29)? How can He possibly cast us off, when by an exercise of such exalted and infinite mercy, He hath made us partakers of His own nature?
Who in most exalted thought can reach this stupendous mystery, much less express it in words? Here we have the most exalted sublimity and the basest vileness; the greatest power and the most abject helplessness; the most glorious majesty and the most inglorious weakness. What can be more sublime than God, or viler than man? Who hath more power than God, or greater moral helplessness than man? Who can be so glorious as God, and so weak as man? But that sublime power devises a plan of redemption, which unites all these elements, when infinite justice required such a union. What finite mind can grasp the greatness of this mystery? An adequate ransom, infinite in value, was demanded for man’s offense, because man had turned himself away from God, the infinite Good. But what could be an adequate satisfaction to an infinite God? Therefore infinite justice takes from itself, as it were, an adequate satisfaction offered by itself, and God the Creator suffers in human flesh, lest man the work of His hands should suffer eternally. Infinite Good was offended, and no one but a Mediator of infinite power could intercede for us. And who is infinite but God only? Hence God reconciled the world unto Himself (2 Cor. 5:19). God Himself became the Mediator. God Himself redeemed mankind with His own blood (Acts 20:28).
Who can understand this marvelous mystery? The almighty Creator had been offended, and yet the creature who had committed the offense manifested no anxiety for a propitiation or reconciliation, but He who had been offended assumed our flesh to make reconciliation for us. Man had forsaken God, and allied himself to the devil, God’s bitter enemy; and yet He, who had been thus deserted, with tender concern seeks the deserter, and most graciously begs him to return to Him again. Man had gone away from infinite Goodness itself, and had fallen into infinite depths of evil; but that very infinite Goodness, having paid an infinite price for his redemption, rescues him from those infinite depths of evil. O does not this infinite mercy exceed the highest thought of the finite human mind? Christ hath brought to our poor human nature a greater glory than it lost by Adam’s sin. In Christ we receive more than we lost in Adam. Where sin had abounded, divine grace hath much more abounded. In Adam we lost our primal innocence, in Christ we receive a full and completed righteousness (Rom. 5:18). Some may justly regard the power of God as wonderful, but still more wonderful is His grace; although so far as God is concerned they are equally wonderful, because both are infinite. Others may admire the wondrous power of God in creation; but still more may we admire the marvels of His grace in redemption, although both creation and redemption alike manifest His infinite power. It was a great thing to create man in the first place, when, as yet not existing, he could deserve neither good nor ill at God’s hands; but to redeem man, when he justly merited condemnation, and to take upon Himself the punishment due for man’s transgression, that seems to me a still greater thing. It is truly wonderful when we consider how God hath formed in us our flesh and our bones; but it is still more wonderful to think how He was willing to become flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone (Eph. 5:30).
O my soul, give unceasing thanks to God who created thee, when as yet thou hadst no being; who redeemed thee, when through sin thou wast under eternal condemnation; and who hath prepared for thee joys unspeakable and full of glory, if thou by faith dost cling to Christ thy Saviour.
Johann Gerhard, Gerhard’s Sacred Meditations, trans. C. W. Heisler (Philadelphia, PA: Lutheran Publication Society, 1896).