Saul: Another Adam

I noticed this in my daily reading last week in 1 Samuel 15

Saul is a king, ruling in God’s land (v. 1). He takes the forbidden fruit, what should have been devoted to destruction (v. 9) and when Samuel challenges him, he blames his wife, that is, the people (vv. 15, 21) - for the relationship between king and his people as that of a husband and his wife, see 2 Samuel 5.1 cf Genesis 2.23. As a result, he is rejected from being king (v. 26).

Saul, instead of being a new Adam and constituting a new humanity in Israel, he is just like the first Adam, who was supposed to have dominion over the world, who took from the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil, who blamed Eve when he was found out, and who was expelled from the garden. This leaves us longing for another, one who is king in God’s world and who is faithful, in whom a new humanity is truly established, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Ebbe’s?”

Click below for the sermon I preached on 1 Samuel 1.1-2.11 at St. Thomas, Kilnhurst (10am):

1 Samuel 1.1-2.11 (24:56, 5.70MB)

I have nothing else lined up at the moment until December.

(The title of this post is the first thing one member of the congregation said to me as I was standing at the door afterwards.)

1 Samuel 1.1-2.11 Sermon Outline

This has been quite a hard passage to prepare. The challenge has been to preach the passage biblically-theologically, rather than preaching Biblical Theology. As ever, comments and suggestions are welcome, particularly on things that could be dropped.

Introduction

Where is hope for the future to be found?
The suggestion of Live Earth a few weeks ago, and humanists and communists in the last century that hope for the future lies in us and our achievements; in the case of humanism, human goodness and science led to two world wars. Communism led to fear, tyranny and oppression.
The writer of 1 Samuel wants to show us where true hope is to be found.

1 God’s servant afflicted (1.1-19)

Introduce the family; comment that God does not endorse bigamy (rare, always portrayed in a negative light). Retell the story, explaining that the LORD is the God of the Bible, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Look at how Hannah is affected (it depresses her) and consider the cause of her trouble: the Lord closed her womb. Look at Hannah’s response: she prays to the Lord. Her vow is not arm-twisting but an expression of her love. She still remains faithful to God, trusts him and makes him her hope.

God does not spare his people from affliction, distress and longing; it is sometimes, even often his will for them to go through it and all they can do is cling to him.

This is the pattern of the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2.23). Illustrate with an episode from Charles Simeon’s life who was made to see that his affliction was having the cross laid upon him. This is the shape of the life of God’s people.

Perhaps this is the case for you at the moment in some way - family tragedy, job loss, health crisis - and it’s grinding you down and you’re depressed, brought to your knees, and all you can do is cry out to God.

How does God answer Hannah’s prayer. It really matters because it shows us whether hope for the future to be found in God, or whether it is an empty hope.

2 God’s salvation revealed (1.19-2.11)

Retell story. Narrative isn’t normative. We see in Hannah’s prayer the significance of what God has done for her. God is unique in his holiness and in the fact that he knows everything and so is able to judge justly. The way God has acted in Hannah’s life is the way God consistently acts and will come to a climax in the future. Illustration of a model church - the same shape as the real thing, but in miniature. In vv. 4-8,  we have a series of reversals which touch every area of life and the shape is the same. When God acts to judge, those who are self-sufficient and have all that they need, who are confident in themselves, will be humbled by God, will be brought low and will have nothing. It is those who are in a low position, who have no confidence in themselves and their circumstances, who are poor and weak, who are lifted up by God and experience his deliverance. God is able to do this because he is completely sovereign over the world - it belongs to him, and he has made it stable and well-ordered.

God’s characteristic way of acting will be shown in the future and God’s people will be guarded and the wicked will be cut off, which follows from what goes before because the experience of God’s people in this world is one of weakness and lowliness and sorrow and the gateway to becoming part of God’s people is to come empty-handed and abandon all self-sufficiency to make him their hope. It is that relationship with him that causes them to be guarded; it is not a matter of might. God’s judgment and conquest of his enemies will extend to the ends of the earth and it will be carried out through his powerful king. The idea of the king comes from the context of Judges: Israel is oppressed and descends into immorality which is Hannah’s dysfunctional family situation on a grand scale and the causes is that Israel had no king in those days. God’s gift of a son to Hannah means that Israel will have a king and he will be the one who brings God’s justice.

This starts to be fulfilled in Saul and then David (defeat of the Philistines, defence of Keilah etc.) but adversaries still remain and judgment does not extend to the ends of the earth. Then comes great David’s greater Son. Christ means “anointed one”. We have already seen in his experience of being reviled and suffering that Hannah’s experience anticipates his. His resurrection proves vv. 4-8 and guarantees v. 10. This is Paul’s logic in Acts 17.31. The promises of v. 10 will be fulfulled when Christ returns but God’s people are safe through Christ’s death on the cross in their place (because they deserve nothing better than God’s adversaries).

So there is great comfort here when we face situations like Hannah’s. It is not a promise that God will answer all our prayers in the way that he answered Hannah’s but in her deliverance, and in all the deliverances it pleases God sometimes to give us, we see God’s Deliverance when he raises up his feeble, lowly people.

It is also a great challenge - to enter into that, we need to be those who are feeble, poor and needly, comign empty-handed and depending on God’s grace in Christ and live that life so often shaped by weakness and affliction.

Conclusion

Thoughts on 1 Samuel 1-2.11

I shall, God willing, be preaching a sermon on 1 Samuel 1-2.11 in a few weeks’ time but I thought this time that I would depart from my usual custom of putting up an abbreviated form of my sermon notes once I have written it, and instead put up some of the fruit of my preparation.

Structure

This hasn’t been noticed in any of the commentaries I have read but this section appears to divide neatly into two sections:

God’s servant afflicted	God’s salvation revealed
Elkanah and his family at home: Hannah childless (1.1-2)	Elkanah and his family at home: Hannah has a child (1.19b-20)
Elkanah and his family go up to Shiloh to sacrifice to YHWH (1.3-	Elkanah and his family go up to Shiloh to sacrifice to YHWH (1.21-24)
Hannah praying at the house of YHWH and speaking to Eli (1.9-1	Hannah praying at the house of YHWH and speaking to Eli (1.25-2.10)
They go home to Ramah (1.19a)	They go home to Ramah (2.11)

Theme

God looks on the affliction of his believing servant and raises her up in answer to her prayer by giving her a child, fitting the shape of his consistent salvation.

Christ

Hannah depicted the salvation of Israel in her crisis (no king, civil war, oppression from the surrounding nations), pointing us forward to the deliverance of God’s people through Christ.

The shape of Hannah’s life of humiliation and exaltation is the same as that of Christ’s death and resurrection, into which the life of the Christian is also moulded. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

God’s judgment of the world, giving strength to his king and exalting the power of his anointed, while destroying his enemies (2.10) finds its fulfilment in the person and work of Christ.

The pattern of Samuel’s life is repeated in that of John the Baptist:

Samuel	John the Baptist
Hannah barren	Elizabeth barren
Samuel to be a Nazirite (1 Samuel 1.11)	John to be a Nazirite (Luke 1.15)
Samuel anoints David and the Spirit rushes on him (1 Samuel 16.13)	John baptises Jesus and the Spirit descends upon him (Luke 3.21-22)

Implications

Although Hannah has a specific role in God’s redemption plan (which will be a major factor in how this passage is applied) and while narrative isn’t normative so that we musn’t claim too much from it, Hannah is nonetheless a believer, and there are parallels between her situation and the circumstances God’s people so often find themselves in. Her behaviour is a good illustration of 1 Peter 4.6-7: “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.” She did not know the role she would play in redemptive history when she acted as she did.

Furthermore, God’s response to her prayer shows the way he can and does sometimes act in the lives of his people, raising them out of lowly situations in which they find themselves, so we may see our deliverances, too, as microcosms of God’s bigger Deliverance.

Believers in their affliction can take comfort in the ultimate salvation that Christ achieved at the cross and will consummate when he returns.

All need to make sure that they are God’s ‘faithful ones’ (2.9), those who belong to God’s people through faith in Christ and persevere in that faith. All need to make sure that they are not the proud and arrogant (v. 3), the mighty (v. 4), the full (v. 5), the wicked (v. 9) but rather that they are the feeble, hungry, poor and needy - those who humble themselves and come empty handed to Christ to receive his free salvation to which they must recognize they can contribute nothing.

There is perhaps a point here about the mysterious providence of God. He is sovereign behind Hannah’s infertility (vv. 5 and 6). He does allow his people to go through times of affliction without them understanding the reason for it. In fact, he is using her to bring glory to himself because her son will be the man who will anoint David, whose seed is the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s power is made perfect in weakness. God chooses what is weak in the world to shame the strong. He chooses what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are (1 Corinthians 1.27-28).

Two ways to live

This chapter presents to us two responses to David, anointed by Samuel as God’s king in ch. 16.

Jonathan’s response is one of faith. He acknowledges that Yahweh will cut off David’s enemies from the face of the earth (v. 15) and so enters into covenant with David, seeking his steadfast love that he may not die, and lovingly obeying him.

Saul on the other hand seeks to put David to death in his desire to see his own dynasty continue as king (v. 31), in spite of the clear word of God that the kingdom will be taken from him (15.26-2 and even attempts to kill Jonathan who has chosen to follow David (v. 33) even though he is his own son.

This section of narrative sees no resolution. David starts off on the run (v. 1) and finishes on the run (v. 42). Yes, he will be king, but not yet.

Clearly, this anticipates great David’s greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s anointed. He was without guilt, just as the writer repeatedly tells us here and in preceding chapters is true of David with regard to Saul (v. 1, v. 8, v. 32). Jesus, like David before him, was a man of sorrows (v. 41). Men sought to and actually succeeded, in putting Jesus to death.

Although we know that Christ was raised from the dead and is now seated on the throne of heaven, having defeated his enemies by the blood of his cross (Colossians 2.15), there is a sense, is there not, that there is still to be a resolution. We do not yet see all things in subjection to him. The prince of this world is still fighting against him to defeat his kingdom. Men and women in the thrall of the devil seek to establish their own rule over their lives and oppose the kingship of Christ.

The question for us is, “Which example will we follow?” (I don’t think it’s at all inappropriate here to see the text as presenting two models, especially given the wider context of 1 Samuel in which it is clear that David is God’s rightful king.) Will we be like Jonathan, and believe that he is God’s king, all of whose enemies will be cut off? Will we love Jesus, enter into covenant with him and serve him, even though it may bring trouble upon us, trusting that being in covenant with him means salvation for us? Or will we be like Saul, reject Jesus’ kingship and seek to establish our own rule? Will we oppose him and ultimately end up as one of his enemies whom the Lord will cut off?