Learning from 1 Samuel 13 - The Contrast Between Saul and David

Acts 13:20-22 - “After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet. Then the people asked for a king, and he gave them Saul son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled forty years. After removing Saul, he made David their king. He testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’”

When the Lord began to work in our midst – in the group that became known as Maranatha – one of the first great experiences was having the Bible come alive for us in a new way, as never before. The Spirit began to take us beyond the letter, beyond a surface reading of the text, into the deeper, prophetic message contained in every story and every passage. It became clear that the entire Old Testament pointed forward to the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, and the work of the salvation that he would accomplish for us. God’s unfolding project of salvation is a constant theme running through the Scriptures. God’s project often conflicts with man’s projects, including man’s well-intentioned religious projects that follow human opinions and agendas instead of God’s will.

We want to please God; and we want to know how to please God. We are not merely interested in Christian ethics, rules, or traditions. Many ethical people have failed to please God, like some of the educated, self-disciplined Romans who persecuted the early Christians. Jesus himself died at the hands of the most religious people of his day, men who knew the Old Testament Scriptures by heart, who kept every religious rule and observed every ritual. It is clear, therefore, that God wants something more from us than being religious or being ethical. In the Bible, there are many stories about people who pleased God and people who did not; these have valuable lessons for us.

Perhaps no characters illustrate this as clearly as David and Saul in the Old Testament. They lived at the same time and their stories overlap. They have many important things in common. Both were kings of Israel, chosen by God. Both received anointing with oil from the Prophet Samuel himself. (1 Samuel 10:1; 16:13) Both won battles for the Lord. (1 Samuel 11:11; 1 Samuel 18:30; 1 Chronicles 18:1)) Both even prophesied under the influence of the Holy Spirit. (1 Samuel 10:10; 2 Samuel 23:1) Their lives, however, had completely different endings: David continued in God’s blessings, and received amazing promises from the Lord for his descendants (2 Samuel 7:5-16). Saul died far from God’s presence or blessing (1 Samuel 31), under a curse, persecuting God’s servants, and even consulting with a witch the night before his death (1 Samuel 28:8). Decisions they made years before had set their course, whether toward destruction or life.

The contrasts between the two interest us the most, because the similarities they share could apply to us as well – to anyone who has been chosen by God, anointed with the Spirit, and used to get a victory for the Lord on some occasion. We share the common features that these men shared (God’s call on our lives, the indwelling of the Spirit, etc.), so it is crucial for us to see what led Saul to lose his blessing, and what enabled David to keep his, and to nurture it so that it grew. In many ways, David’s life became a prophetic picture of Jesus himself and the work Jesus would do.