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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CONTRIBUTING RESOURCES
Author: Teresa Seputis ts@godspeak.net http://www.godspeak.net
Editor: Elvi Glass

A Prophet's Eye-View Of Bible History"

Lesson 15
God's Government (part 3 of 3)
Samuel, Saul and David

By Teresa Seputis

God created the earth, and humanity (left to their own devices) became evil and had to be destroyed. God spared one godly man and his family and from them the earth was re-populated. As the population began to increase, God selected and nurtured a special people group to be His people and to worship Him. He started with a single family and for the first several generations, the family was governed by their patriarchs.

When the children of Israel grew into a massive people group, God began to appoint human leaders as His representatives as God governed His people. He started with Moses and Joshua, then went to a series of judges. After that, the leadership job fell to the priests and prophets, and leadership was passed down through bloodlines from generation to generation. Some of them were godly and great leaders. But some of them were not very good stewards of God's people -- some were self- serving and wicked.

Samuel

Samuel's mother was barren and she desperately wanted a son. She told God that if He gave her one, she would give the boy back to God to serve Him. Shortly after that she got pregnant and had Samuel. True to her word, as soon as the child was weaned, she presented him to Eli the high priest. (God allowed her to have other children after that).

Samuel grew up in the temple, raised by Eli the high priest. Eli was a good high priest and leader of the people. But he had a character flaw in how he raised his children -- he did not do a very good job of disciplining them or holding them accountable for ungodly behavior. The sons worked in the temple as priests, and they were very self serving and ungodly. They treated offerings to God with contempt. God eventually judged and killed Eli's sons for their behavior. But this was the example of fatherhood that Samuel grew up with.

Samuel himself was a godly boy and likeable boy, and God was pleased with him. God called to Samuel while he slept in the temple. Samuel did not know it was God calling him, so he went to Eli. This happened a few times and then Eli realized that God was calling the boy, and he instructed Samuel on how to respond to God. Then God spoke to Samuel and gave him a prophecy about how he was going to kill Eli's sons for their sins and kill Eli for failing to restrain them. Samuel was afraid to tell Eli what God had said, but Eli insisted. God's judgment did not fall immediately and Eli continued to train Samuel. During that time, Samuel began moving strongly as a prophet and was recognized as one by the people, even though he was very young.

When God carried out his judgment against Eli and his sons, Samuel became the high priest and leader of the Israelites. The Philistines came to attack them, and Samuel prayed and interceded and God gave them a tremendous military victory. Samuel continued to lead and judge Israel until he got old. Then he set his sons as judges over Israel. But his sons had been raised by the same model as Eli's sons, and they were ungodly and unjust and Samuel was unable to restrain them.

The people became very upset by this and asked Samuel to give them a king to lead them, like other nations have. Samuel was very upset by their request and he cried out to God. God told Samuel that they were rejecting Him, not rejecting Samuel. The people wanted to rule themselves instead of being ruled by God. Samuel tried to warn them of the dangers of having kings instead of God as their ruler. But they insisted. So God told him to give them what they asked for.

Saul

The man God chose for the job was Saul. He definitely looked the part. He was tall, handsome and very impressive looking. First Samuel anointed Saul as king by pouring oil over his head and prophesying to him. Then God anointed Saul as king by putting the Holy Spirit on him and allowing him to prophecy with a group of prophets. God even changed Saul's heart to give him a desire to be a good king. After that, Samuel presented Saul to the people as their new king. They immediately judged him by outward appearance and felt he would be a good king because he stood a head taller than anyone else in the kingdom.

Saul started out well. The Ammonites besieged one of the Jewish cities, called Jabesh. So the elders of the city tried to make a treaty with the Ammonites. But the Ammonites insisted on one incredibly unreasonable term -- that they gouge out the right eye of every man, woman and child in the city. So the residents of Jahesh put out a plea for help through all of Israel. Saul rose up in God's anointing and power and mustered an army of 300,000 and slaughtered the Ammonites. Saul was confirmed as king immediately after that.

Immediately after that, Samuel gave a farewell speech and resigned from political leadership. However he did continue to function as a prophet and a priest.

Saul reigned for 42 years. He drafted an army of 3,000 to serve as his personal guards and as a national guard. Then he got into a conflict with the Philistines, whose army was much larger than Saul's. Saul asked Samuel to come do a sacrifice and ask God to fight on their behalf. When Samuel was a bit delayed in arriving, Saul offered the sacrifice himself. Samuel arrived as Saul was finishing the offering and rebuked him. Saul tried to make himself more than God had made him. He tried to be a spiritual leader as well as a political leader, but God had not appointed him as a spiritual leader. Samuel warned him that his kingdom would not endure because he did not have a heart to obey God. Nonetheless, God did help him with his battles with the Philistines, but did not empower him to completely defeat them. There were constant battles and skirmishes.

Jonathan was Saul's son and had more faith and more of a heart for God than his father did. God responded to his faith by making him a very mighty warrior. In fact, Jonathan and his armor bearer were key in winning an important battle against the Philistines.

With the Philistines out of the picture for a while, God instructed Saul to punish the Amalekites for attacking Israel when they came out of Egypt. Saul had very specific instructions: total annihilation. He was instructed to kill all the people -- men, women and children, and also destroy all their livestock -- cattle, sheep, camels and donkeys. Saul fought and defeated the Amalekites as God had commanded. But he did not kill their king and he did not kill most of the livestock. Samuel met him and prophetically rebuked him for his disobedience, telling him "Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king" (1 Sam 15:23). Saul had become pretty "full of himself" by this time, and he had just built a monument to himself. When Samuel pronounced judgment on him, he was more concerned with outward appearances than with pleasing God. He asked Samuel to accompany him back for a worship celebration with the nation's elders. Samuel complied, but after that, Saul never saw him again.

At that point, God's spirit left Saul and he became demonized. He would go into a terrible state when the demons tormented him, and his advisors hired David to play the harp to sooth Saul when he had these attacks. At first Saul liked David a lot, but over time he became demonically jealous of him and wanted to kill him.

David

God sent Samuel to anoint David as king shortly after He rejected Saul. However, there was a long period of time between when David was anointed and when he actually became king. In fact, he served as Saul's harp player shortly after he was anointed king.

The Philistines massed to attack Judah and Saul went to war with them. David did not accompany Saul to the battle -- he returned home. After a while his father sent him to the front lines to bring some supplies to his older brothers, who were soldiers. While he was there, he heard Goliath, a giant over 9 feet tall, challenge Saul's army. David was not old enough to fight as a soldier in the army, but he was angry at Goliath's challenge and at the fact that no soldier would take the challenge. So he offered to fight him. He told Saul how God had delivered a lion and a bear into his hands when he defended his flock. So Saul agreed to let him try.

David went out to meet Goliath with only a slingshot. Goliath was insulted that the Israelites sent a boy to fight him and scoffed at David. David's reply was "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty ... this day the Lord will hand you over to me ... And the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give all of you into our hands" (1 Sam 17:45-47). God did precisely what David predicted. David shot the giant in the head with the slingshot and killed him. Then David cut off his head and the Philistines ran away Saul's army chased them and killed many of them.

After that, David and Jonathan became best friends, and David joined the army. God was with David and made him a very successful soldier, even better than Saul was. Saul got jealous of David because of this. But since David was so popular, he decided to make him a political ally and gave him his daughter to marry. Over time, Saul's jealousy got worse and he tried to kill David multiple times. David was forced to flee for his life, and Saul pursued him on a few occasions.

While Saul had no regard for God's wishes or his anointing, David had a tremendous regard for it. One time when Saul was chasing David, he slept in the very cave that David and his men were hiding in. David's men urged David to kill Saul while he slept. But David refused, saying he would not slay the Lord's anointed. Saul was self-promoting, but David allowed God to promote him. Saul and Jonathan were eventually killed in a battle and David was made king over Judah. It took longer for him to be king over Israel because the officials from Saul's regime set up one of Saul's sons as king and there was a power-struggle type war that lasted seven and a half years to see who would become king. David finally won.

David became king of Judah at age 40 and king of all Israel at age 47. David was a strong military leader, who fought and won a lot of battles. He was also a prophetic minstrel and had a heart for God -- so much so that God called David "A man after My own heart." But David was not a very good father. He had a short stretch when he lusted after and took another man's wife and got her pregnant. Then he had the man murdered to cover his indiscretion and married the widow. God sent a prophet to rebuke David and he repented and was forgiven. However, the baby died and he was cursed with "a sword in his own household. There were an amazing amount of family tensions, including one of his sons raping his sister and another of his sons raising up in rebellion against him to try and overthrow him.

David had it in his heart to build a temple to God, but God would not allow him to do so because he was "a bloody man" -- e.g., he had killed a lot of people. So David amassed the building materials for the temple and instructed his son and heir to build the temple. David was a good king who had a heart after God and ruled His people well. He did make some mistakes as a ruler, such as the time when he took a census and angered God and God sent a plague to kill many in Israel. David realized his mistake and threw himself on God's mercy and pleaded for the nation and God relented and stopped the plague.

When David was very old, he made Solomon king as his successor. Then David charged Solomon to be a godly king, and to build the temple and to always honor and obey God.

David and Saul make for an interesting contrast. Saul embodied man's criteria and standards, and embodied God's. We find that the people who look like the most qualified candidates for leadership often are not the best ones. The biggest criteria is not one's appearance or skills or credentials, but their heart after God and their commitment to obey Him.


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-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.net> --

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