Saul's Fading Faith

1 Samuel 13

Saul quickly slipped away into defensive mode as king of Israel. He was interested in preserving what he had—he had no vision to expand to regain territory lost to the enemy. He didn't possess the kind of faith that moved him to push back enemies. He kept a relatively small army divided between himself and his son, Jonathan, because he wasn't planning on fighting anytime soon!  Jonathan was much more eager to engage the enemy.

When Jonathan attacked a Philistine outpost, it stirred a response from the Philistine army.  Saul took credit for his son’s action and called up all the men of Israel to resist the Philistines.

The Philistine army far out-‘gunned’ the Israelites. Once Israel saw the extent of Philistine superiority, they melted away and took cover wherever they could find it—so Saul was left with a severely reduced force. Clearly Saul and Israel figured that the only way to beat the Philistines was to have a superior force—but it didn't seem to occur to them to rely on God.

Samuel had told Saul to wait for him to come and make sacrifices to God on behalf of Israel and to seek God’s victory. But every day that went by saw more and more of Saul’s army desert him.

At that point, with still no sign of Samuel, Saul took matters into his own hand.  He took on the priest’s role and offered the sacrifices.  Just as he was doing so, Samuel arrived—shocked that Saul should be so presumptuous as to offer sacrifices he had no business handling.

Saul makes the excuses that he was losing his men and Samuel was late, and the Philistines were growing in strength with each passing day. 

Samuel rebukes Saul because he ignored God’s command to wait. If he had waited on God in faith, God would have established his kingship to the following generations.  As it was, he had punched a hole in the bottom of his own boat and his kingship was sinking fast.  God was already preparing the next man to be king—a man who cared about God’s ways and would be obedient.

Saul was left with 600 nervous soldiers—there was no way he could fight the Philistines. It seems that the Philistines didn't even bother fighting with Saul—they just exerted some more pressure on Israel—sending out raiding parties to scare the Israelite towns.  One of their strategies was to confiscate weapons from Israel and to capture or kill Israel’s iron and bronze-workers (blacksmiths) so that there was no one who could make swords and spears—or even to sharpen their plows and other farming equipment.  In this way they made Israel militarily and economically weak.  Saul and his son were the only ones with weapons!

Things to consider:

·         Why did Saul’s faith evaporate?

·         Why did Jonathan’s initial attack fizzle out?

·         Why was it important that Saul did not act as a priest, but waited for Samuel?

·         How was Saul responding to Samuel’s mentoring?

·         Why was Saul’s decision to force himself to make the sacrifice, the one that sunk his kingship?

·         What happened to Israel when they gave ground to the enemy?

·         In what ways does Saul’s failure warn us about failing as a man of God?

·         What might it mean for a Christian or a Church to have Saul’s policy of ‘maintenance’ rather than ‘expansion’.

·         What weapons is the Enemy keen to take away from Christians?

·         What does this episode teach us about how to resist the Devil effectively?

·         How would a ‘man after God’s heart’ have responded to this challenge?

·         Jesus is the ultimate ‘man after God’s heart’, how should we engage with him in fighting the enemy?