You’re in luck this morning because I am going to show you how to make a huge amount of money. Would you like to do that? You don’t have to invest in any stocks. You don’t have to buy gold, although you should have bought gold last year! There is no flipping of cheap real estate foreclosures. You don’t have to buy into a multilevel marketing business and sell coffee creamer and laundry detergent. You don’t have to do any of these things, but you can still make some big money—I mean big money. How does 25 million dollars sound to you? All you have to do is catch this guy with the last name of bin Laden. The U.S. government is offering a 25 million dollar reward leading to his capture. But before you get too excited and rush out to claim the 25 million, I must warn you of the disclaimer. The actual reward reads, “The rewards for justice program…is offering a reward of up to $25 million for information leading directly to the apprehension or conviction of Usama bin Laden.” In other words, you might actually capture bin Laden and then since it says “up to $25 million,” you might only get $10,000. I just thought I should make you aware of the fine print before you buy your plane ticket to Afghanistan. J

Three thousand years ago a different WANTED poster was circulating around the Israeli army with this brute on the front—Goliath. They didn’t actually print wanted posters because they didn’t need them. Every single soldier in the army knew the reward: great wealth, marriage to King Saul’s daughter and exemption from tax for his family. Don’t you find it interesting that 3,000 years ago the promise of a tax break was supposed to be highly motivating! I picture the army commanders trying to recruit someone to fight Goliath. The commander announces, “Alright men, who wants to fight Goliath?” (Dead silence.) “OK, I thought you were brave men who fought for honor, but I guess I’ll have to sweeten the deal. The king has promised great wealth for the man who kills Goliath. Now who wants to go?” (No response.) “OK, no takers, then try this one on for size. The king has also promised to give his daughter Merab in marriage to the successful warrior. Now who wants to fight Goliath?” (Nothing but a few crickets chirping.) “Alright then, I’ll tell you the last reward. The king has also promised to exempt your family from taxes. (Suddenly every arm is raised, “Oh, Oh, pick me, pick me!”)

Despite these great incentives, we know how the story played out. For forty straight days not one man was willing to take on the nine foot warrior. No one, that is, except the short little boy named David. David was granted success from the Lord, but Saul did not make good on his promise of a reward. David didn’t get any of these rewards for his bravery. We have already learned that Saul was rejected as king and that the Holy Spirit had left him, and now the rest of the book of 1 Samuel will show the downward spiral of the once powerful King Saul. And as Saul spirals downward we will also see the steady rise of David until he ascends to the throne itself. Saul must decrease and David must increase

Let me summarize the major events of these two chapters.

· The Lord sends an evil spirit to torment Saul. While David was playing the harp to soothe Saul’s devilish mood, Saul hurls not one, but two spears at David in order to kill him.

· Finally, Saul offers his daughter Merab in marriage to David as a very subtle way to get him killed, but then reneges on the deal and gives Merab to another man to marry.

· Saul offers his second daughter, Michal, to David in marriage, this time with an even stronger intent to see David killed by the Philistines.

· Saul’s son, Jonathan, saves David by reminding his father that David is a good man and how he saved the nation from Goliath and the Philistines.

· Saul promises not to kill David.

· Again the Lord sends an evil spirit to torment Saul. While David was playing the harp to soothe him, Saul threw yet another spear at him

· Since he missed with his spear, Saul sent a squad of soldiers to kill David at his house.

· David’s wife, Michal, saves him by helping David escape.

· Saul sends three groups of soldiers to kill David but they all start prophesying.

· Finally, Saul goes after David to kill him but he also begins to prophesy.

Saul lays out a complicated scheme of deception and treachery with no less than six attempts on David’s life in two chapters, despite the fact that in between attempt number four and attempt number five, Saul promised not to kill David. This leads to our first principle: Insane dictators rarely keep their promises. Now there’s a principle you can use this coming week when you run into an insane dictator or two! I am joking about the principle but serious about the portrayal of Saul. By this point in time, it is safe to say he is already an insane dictator with a singular obsession to kill David. And it gets worse, because there are still twelve more chapters which detail the bloodthirsty chase of his arch nemesis. I don’t know if Herman Melville had Saul in mind when he wrote Moby Dick, but he should have. King Saul is Captain Ahab and David is his white whale. Saul becomes absolutely obsessed with killing him, and like a whale, Saul actually hurls spears at his prey.  But very much unlike the white whale, David never did any harm to Saul. On the contrary, David was the most brave, honorable and loyal subject Saul had ever had.

But Saul was not able to see this loyalty because he was being eaten alive by fear and jealousy. We are told three times about this fear.

· Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with David but had left Saul. (18:12)

· When Saul saw how successful [David] was, he was afraid of him. (18:15)

· When Saul realized that the Lord was with David and that his daughter Michal loved David, Saul became still more afraid of him, and he remained his enemy the rest of his days. (18:28)

Saul feared that David was a better man than he was, but the fact of the matter is that David was a better man than Saul. He was better in almost every way and Saul knew this—and so Saul feared him. This passage tells us that Saul had both fear and jealousy, but jealousy is a type of fear. Jealousy flows out of fear. Saul feared David and became jealous of David and then wanted to kill David.

A principle that we can pull from this is that wickedness hates righteousness. In his wicked state, Saul hated the righteousness of David. This may explain why you struggle to get along with some people—they may actually fear your righteousness and hate you as a result. Such a person might actually hate the goodness within you. But before you jump to any conclusions, we must be careful that we are not like the drop-dead gorgeous woman who swaggers onto the stage, throws her golden locks of hair over her shoulder and with a self-admiring voice decalres, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.” Such a woman assumes that everyone hates her because she is dazzlingly beautiful when in reality they hate her because she is so disgustingly conceited. Some people may genuinely not like us because they have a hatred of our good deeds and way of life. But they may also hate us because we have been unkind, unloving or just a plain jerk.

I like how Pastor Tim Keller puts it. We know that some people will hate our righteousness and good deeds, but we also have passages like Matthew 5:16. “In the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” Pastor Keller summarizes these two extremes this way: some people will want to pat you on the back and some will want to punch you in the mouth. He also said that this can be a good rule of thumb for knowing if you are living in holiness and love—about half of the people will pat you on the back and the other half will punch you in the mouth.

But jealousy is such a strong fear that it absolutely blinds the jealous person to its reality. Dr. Carson tells the story of a father who was threatened by his son’s athletic ability. One day the young boy finally surpassed his father’s ability and the dad never played sports with the son ever again. We can be jealous of people at work, at church, or yes, even in our own homes. Jealousy creeps up all over the place. One common area of jealousy is among pastoral staff. I have heard story after story of senior pastors being threatened by younger staff and associate pastors trying to push out the senior staff. Think about another person with whom you struggle to get along. Consider if fear or jealousy might play a part. Maybe this person really is better than you in a certain area. Maybe this person is more gifted. Saul knew that David was the better man and he hated him for it. However, Jonathan knew that David was the better man and he loved him for it. Of the two, Jonathan had the greatest reason to fear David, because Jonathan was the rightful heir to the throne. Jonathan knew that David was the better man and would one day take his place on the throne, but instead of being destroyed by jealousy and fighting against God, Jonathan chose to submit to God’s plan and humbly concede his future kingdom to David.

When you see the seething jealousy and insanity of Saul, the most obvious questions is, Why did God ever put Saul on the throne in the first place? After all, the people did not elect Saul but rather Saul was God’s specific choice. To answer that question, we need to see where the notion of a king came from. Whose idea was it to appoint a king? We spent three weeks in chapter eight where the people rejected the kingly rule of God and asked for a king to lead them and fight their battles. If you studied only this chapter, you could make a water tight case that the notion of a king arose out of the sinful desires of the people. But this conclusion would miss the truth by a mile, for it was not man’s idea to appoint a king—it was God’s idea. And we see this laid out as early as Genesis 17. “I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.”

Let’s stop there and make sure we understand the significance of this verse. This is part of the Lord’s covenant with Abraham. Abraham was given the promise of land and of many descendants, that they would becoem a great nation. But we overlook this part of the promise—that kings will come from you. The promise of kings is just as much a part of the covennt with Abraham as the promsie of land and descendants. The Lord’s covenant with Abraham was made again to his grandson Jacob in Genesis 35. “And God said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase in number. A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will come from your body.’” (Ge 35:11)

Fast forward 400 years just before the Israelites entered the promised land. God describes the coming of a king. “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, ‘Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us.’” (Dt 17:14)  Do you recognize this verse? It is almost identical to the people’s request for a king in chapter eight. “Appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.” If you only have chapter eight, then the appointing of a king looks like a curse. When you add the insanity of King Saul into the mix, it really looks like a curse. Surely God gave Israel a king in order to curse them for their rejection of him. But this cannot be true since God knew that a king would lead Israel four hundred years before it happened. If a king is not a curse, perhaps the king was a concession. God really didn’t want a king, but he allowed a king.

If all we had was 1 Samuel and this passage in Deuteronomy, then we could conclude that the king was God’s form of concession. But the king was not a curse or even a concession. The king was a blessing! The promise of a king is inseparably linked with the other promises to Abraham. But King Saul doesn’t look anything like a blessing, right? Obviously, the blessing of a king cannot be fulfilled in Saul. As we will see in the coming weeks, when David ruled as king, he was a blessing to his people. But despite all the good he did, the promised blessing of a king cannot be fulfilled in David either. The promised blessing of a king in Genesis is ultimately the promise of The King—King Jesus. The promise in Genesis is an early announcement of the gospel message. Paul said as much in Galatians 3. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”

Therefore, the anointing of the first king was the beginning of the coming of Christ the King. So now we can return to out original question: why did God appoint a king like Saul in the first place? Certainly there are lessons to be learned from his life, like watching out for the power of jealousy, the necessity of the Holy Spirit, and many others. But even while we read about Saul’s insane jealousy of David, we must see that the gospel is advancing forward. The promise of the king as arrived. These kings will be a mixture of good and evil over the next several hundred years, and even though Israel’s kings will ultimately be the demise of the nation itself, the gospel moves forward. Even while Saul is hurling spears at David, there is a thread of the gospel woven through there. David did not realize it in the same way that we do, but David was helping the gospel to advance forward. The promise of the kings had arrived. Even the struggles between Saul and David are evidence that the gospel was moving forward.

In the same way, even today in the struggles of sin, sickness and death, the gospel still moves forward. Has the gospel ever been propagated in the absence of sin, sickness and death? No! No church has ever been planted in the absence of sin. No unreached people group has ever had the gospel preached to them in the absence of sin. No meaningful endeavor for Christ has ever been successful in the absence of sin. The ravages of sin will still destroy and kill, but God is still king and his gospel still advances. I am not suggesting for a minute that this excuses our jealousies, fighting and conflict. The gospel moved forward under Saul, just as it moved under King David, but this is not an excuse to act like Saul

Rich Maurer

March 9, 2008