Why Saul?
Today we
receive the story of God telling Samuel that Saul will come before him. While this is a great story, I can’t help but
wonder at a single question. Why would
God choose Saul as the king of Israel when God knows that ultimately He will
have to reject Saul? Certainly God knows
the future. God knows what will happen
between Him and Saul. So why pick Saul
in the first place?
That is an
incredibly difficult question. First,
remember that the answer lies in an understanding of God’s foreknowledge mixing
with His permissive will and humanity’s free will. God knows what will happen, but that does not
mean God forces it to happen. God sets
the opportunity to be a faithful leader before Saul; it is up to Saul to decide
just how faithful he is going to be. From
this perspective, God does this in order to reveal to Saul what his true
character looks like.
Of course,
this doesn’t really help answer the original question because God knows what
Saul will do with the opportunity. It
merely demonstrates that although God knows the future, He is permissive to
allow it to occur with flaws and all so that Saul can see himself for who he
really is. So again, from God’s
perspective, why choose Saul in the first place?
We must
also remember that God does not have a single-minded agenda. God is concerned about leading His people in
His ways. God is also concerned about
the Philistine presence in the land. God
is concerned about the status of the tribes.
This only begins to scrape the tip of God’s iceberg of concerns at this
time. Saul will accomplish at least two
things quite well. Saul will bring the
tribes together to work together. And
Saul will be quite effective against the Philistines. So while it seems like Saul is a huge
spiritual failure in the end, Saul does accomplish some good points in
non-spiritual terms. When we remember
this, the choice of Saul doesn’t seem “all bad.”
Finally,
let’s remember a healthy dose of reality.
How many of us can claim to follow God spiritually 100% of the
time? How many of us can claim to be
God’s followers without fault? The
reality is that when God looks to you and me and chooses us to participate in
His kingdom He is choosing flawed human beings all the time! So God choosing Saul to be king and to
accomplish what He can with a flawed ruler is not really any different than God
choosing us with all of our flaws. Sure,
I hope spiritually you and I work out a little better than Saul, but that does
not mean that you and I are without fault!
Banquets Come Before Reign
So let’s
move ahead to the story of the private meeting between Saul and Samuel, which
of course leads up to the dinner invitation before 30 other people. Samuel had told the cook to reserve a portion
of the meat. The Lord had come to Samuel
telling him to get ready to meet the one who will be king. Faults and all, God is still in charge.
Notice
that here we set a very important pattern. Before the king is inaugurated there is a
meal, a feast, a banquet! This could
potentially remind us that before Christ was crucified – inaugurating the time
of God’s grace and forgiveness among mankind – He too had a banquet. We remember a portion of this Passover
banquet when we gather for worship. We
call it communion. What is communion but
remembering the first step to Jesus’ inauguration as an authority over sin and
death!
However,
that was probably not the first place that your mind went with the banquet/king
analogy. You likely thought about the
coming future. Think about when Christ
will be appointed king and ruler over the earth. What is the imagery that prepares this
momentous event? It is none other than
the wedding feast/banquet!
Matthew
22:1-14 is a parable about a king who gives a wedding feast for his son. We know it to be a parable about the coming
inauguration of Christ who is united with His bride – and His bride is the
church, predominantly made up of Gentiles (the riff-raff out on the
street)! Luke 25:1-13 gives us the
parable of the 10 virgins, who are preparing for a wedding feast. We also know this parable to be about the
coming of Christ and our need to prepare for that moment while we can. Revelation 19:6-12 gives us a great image of
the marriage feast of the lamb. Notice
that this story immediately precedes the coming of the rider on the white horse
that comes to gather up the beast and to subdue the earth.
As you can
see, the idea of a wedding feast, marriage supper, or a banquet before a time
of inauguration is quite common in scripture.
So it is here in 1 Samuel 9 as well.
God has chosen a king – flaws and all.
And it begins with the future king sitting down and partaking in a
banquet. It is a neat theme that runs
the gamut of scripture.
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