State of The Union
1 Samuel
11 gives us Saul’s first military conquest.
Let’s look at what we can learn from this story. There are a fair amount of life lessons in
here.
First, we
begin with the number of soldiers that goes out with Saul. We are told that there are 300,000
soldiers. This is roughly half of the
fighting force that the Hebrew people had under Joshua when they entered the
Promised Land. What does this tell
us? The Hebrew nation is in a state of
decline. Things are getting worse for
the Hebrew people.
This
really shouldn’t come as any great surprise.
The Hebrew people had it rough under the judges. The Hebrew people strayed from God. They walked away from his ways. They wanted to be like the other
nations. They lusted after foreign
gods. They had a fair amount of
infighting. Take all of these things
together and is there any wonder that the strength of the nation was in
decline?
When we
walk away from God and desire to be like the people of the world, we can expect
the same results to come to us. Why
should God prosper us if we choose to ignore Him? Why should any of us think that God will look
upon us with favor and give us peace when we do not follow His ways?
But Saul
does take this fighting force and he does go out and have success against the
Ammonites. Saul does what he has been
called to do as a king and raises an army to defend the Hebrew people. And he does it very well, mind you.
Human Nature in Victory
In fact,
Saul does it so well that we see two aspects of human nature in our next lesson. After the victory, some people come forward
and indicate that they want to kill those who initially raised objections to
Saul being put over them as king. In
this action we see human pride and human short-sightedness.
Let’s
start with human short-sightedness. What
is short-sighted about these people?
Well, for starters they wish to celebrate after a single victory. They think that one victory has proven that
they were right in choosing Saul as king.
How many times do we see things start so well and then fail? The short-sightedness of humanity latches
onto short-term success (or failure) and automatically assumes that it will
mean long-term success (or failure, respectively).
Furthermore,
we know that God was opposed to the king in the first place. Human short-sightedness also creates the idea
that success implies God’s blessing while failure implies God’s
opposition. Yet, we know how Saul’s
reign will end. Saul’s life will come
crashing down around him. Human
short-sightedness keeps us from waiting until the story has been written before
making judgments about whether it was God’s will or not.
This event
also shows the pride of humanity. What
do victors often do? They gloat in their
victory over the losers. Victors are
more to blame for bitter rivalries than are the losers. People who win with grace and humility seldom
have rivals as the losers can see respectable qualities in the person to whom
they lost. Victors who in their pride
gloat over, brag upon, and oppress the losers make bitter rivalries. And that is human nature. It is human nature to point out that “we
won,” “you lost,” “we are more
powerful,” “you are weak,” and “we are better.”
This is not how God wants us to act.
God wants us to be humble, and gracious, and merciful, caring for the poor
and downtrodden, looking out for the oppressed.
Look at Christ! Jesus did not
come to rule the earth, He came to die!
He humbled himself – even in victory over sin. The people who call for the death of those
who opposed Saul’s coronation show the ugliness of humanity.
Grace
Finally,
this event shows us the grace with which Saul begins his reign. Saul does not kill anyone. Oh, how it would have been easy for Saul to
ride the wave of the people and put his opponents to death! {And
the Saul we’ll meet in a few chapters likely would have done it!} However, the Saul we meet here is humble in
his victory party. He does not encourage
that his political opponents be harmed.
In Saul’s mind the victory says enough, for now. A good leader knows when to let the action
speak louder than words.
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