Okay, tonight I invite you to please turn in the Bible to 1 Samuel chapter 10, 1 Samuel chapter 10. We're continuing our study tonight in this book after some time and we're still looking really at Israel's choice of a king, the struggle to get a king. There's a tension here that I'm still trying to figure out myself. I go back and forth on it and you'll see why. is the Lord choosing this king? Is Israel choosing this king? I think that's an important question that the text is actually purposely wanting us to see it, the tension there. And I hope you see that tonight as we look at 1 Samuel 10. Let's give our attention tonight to God's word. Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on his head and kissed him and said, has not the Lord anointed you to be prince over his people Israel? and you shall reign over the people of the Lord, and you will save them from the hand of their surrounding enemies. And this shall be the sign to you that the Lord has anointed you to be prince over his heritage. When you depart from me today, you will meet two men by Rachel's tomb in the territory of Benjamin at Zelzah, and they will say to you, the donkeys that you went to seek are found, and now your father has ceased to care about the donkeys and is anxious about you, saying, What shall I do about my son? Then you shall go on from there farther and come to the oak of Tabor. Three men going up to God at Bethel will meet you there, one carrying three young goats, another carrying three loaves of bread, and another carrying a skin of wine. And they will greet you and give you two loaves of bread, which you shall accept from their hand. After that, you shall come to Gibeath Elohim, where there is a garrison of the Philistines, And there, as soon as you come to the city, you will meet a group of prophets coming down from the high place with harp, tambourine, flute, lyre before them, prophesying. Then the Spirit of the Lord will rush upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man. Now when these signs meet you, do what your hand finds to do, for God is with you. Then go down before me to Gilgal, and behold, I am coming down to you to offer burnt offerings and to sacrifice peace offerings. Seven days you shall wait until I come to you and show you what you shall do. When he turned his back to leave Samuel, God gave him another heart. And all these signs came to pass that day. When they came to Gibeah, behold, a group of prophets met him, and the Spirit of God rushed upon him, and he prophesied among them. And when all who knew him previously saw how he prophesied with the prophets, the people said to one another, What has come over the son of Kish? Is Saul among the prophets? And a man of the place answered, And who is their father? Therefore it became a proverb, Is Saul also among the prophets? When he had finished prophesying, he came to the high place. Saul's uncle said to him and to his servant, Where did you go? And he said to seek the donkeys. And when we saw they were not to be found, we went to Samuel. And Saul's uncle said, Please tell me what Samuel said to you. And Saul said to his uncle, He told us plainly that the donkeys had been found. But about the matter of the kingdom of which Samuel had spoken, he did not tell him anything. Now Samuel called the people together to the Lord at Mizpah. And he said to the people of Israel, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, I brought up Israel out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you. But today you've rejected your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses. And you have said to him, set a king over us. Now, therefore, present yourselves before the Lord by your tribes and by your thousands. Then Samuel brought all the tribes of Israel near, and the tribe of Benjamin was taken by Lot. He brought the tribe of Benjamin near by its clans, and the clan of the Metrites was taken by Lot, and Saul, the son of Kish, was taken by Lot. But when they sought him, he could not be found. So they inquired again of the Lord, is there a man still to come? And the Lord said, behold, he's hidden himself among the baggage. Then they ran and took him from there. And when he stood among the people, he was taller than any of the people from his shoulders upward. And Samuel said to the people, do you see him whom the Lord has chosen? There is none like him among all the people. And all the people shouted, long live the king. Then Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship, and he wrote them in a book and laid it up before the Lord. Then Samuel sent all the people away, each one to his home. Saul also went to his home at Gibeah, and with him went men of valor, whose hearts God had touched. But some worthless fellows said, How can this man save us? And they despised him and brought him no present, but he held his peace. And there ends the reading of God's Word. We have a very important section of Scripture in front of us tonight. A very, of course, interesting section with details that are, yes, fascinating and what do you do with them. A discussion between the uncle and these sort of things. What it really is tonight is the establishment here of the monarchy and the establishment here of Israel receiving her king. To have a king in Israel was not necessarily an evil thing, was it? Well, look at that. The problem with this whole thing was the request itself, which means that it was the spirit behind the request. It wasn't so wrong, the request itself. I'll show you that. It was what they were doing in the request, what the Lord exposed from the heart of Israel of what was going on in the request. They were rejecting the Lord as their king. It's said plainly here. And so the whole thing has started off on bad footing. From the beginning, we're seeing that this is wrong with this king. Something is very wrong with this king that is being installed in Israel. We went through last time the sections here and we looked at the more centralized you put authority and power around one man. It's a very big danger that we need to be cautious of in our day. The more you do that and you centralize power around one man, the more your freedoms go. It's a fact of history. It's been proven. The Lord said that. The king will take. The king will take. The king will take. The king will take. Remember that. All those takes of what the king will do. The reason here tonight, then, that we always have that song in our heads, which I'm kind of mad I didn't pick, Put No Confidence in Princes. Interesting that we sing, put no confidence in princes, for that is kind of all the Lord is calling Saul, isn't he? Which is interesting. Why is he not calling him the king? He's the prince. Put no confidence in princes. Well, what we have before us is the sad outplay from the beginning of the consequences of them getting a king like all the other nations. Right from the beginning. And that's what we're challenged with tonight here. The surprising thing that the Lord works with this. We know Romans 13 says there's no authority that's not put into power except by Him. The Lord works with this. The Lord has the king anointed. The Lord has the king installed. The Lord has the king proclaimed in Israel. And it should press us tonight then, well, if we're seeing already problems with this, If in the middle of this installation service, if in the middle of the anointing, the Lord comes and says, you've rejected me, then clearly we're getting to the heart of what the Lord wants to say to us today. I'm your king. I'm your Lord. I'm your God. Do you know that? We'll probe that a little bit. Or are we a lot like Israel, more than we think? Are we a people who understand how wonderful it is that the Lord is ruling over us and that He is ruling us? Do we believe that? Do we believe that it's a gracious reign? We're going to study this all in light of what happened with Israel here and this mess of them asking for a king. So what we have here tonight is here the presentation of their king, that the king is presented to Israel. There's a, I believe, a pretty fascinating description here of the character of this king. And then, of course, after we study the character of this king, we really have the cry. What we have here is the crying need for a true king. That's how we'll look at this tonight. In the first section here, we have three things that are really happening that are showing us how this king is being presented to Israel. You have his anointing, you have his empowering, and then you have his declaring. You'll see that here in this section all the way through in chapter 10, those three things. To kind of pick up where we were last time, remember that Saul had been looking for his father's donkeys. He was a kind of shepherd, which is another interesting tie to this morning, isn't it? About true shepherds and false shepherds and these sort of things that we looked at. The servant here, remember, had said, let's go to Samuel. we can't find the donkeys, let's go to Samuel and he will tell us. In those days, the prophets were called seers. He will give us insight in what to do. And remember what happened, that as Saul and his servant were heading to Samuel, the Lord identified Saul to Samuel. The next day as they had come, they had a feast here, and Samuel tells his servant, Go ahead and go on ahead. I need to talk to Saul. In verse one is a big moment. Samuel took the flask of oil and poured it on Saul and kissed him, saying, has not the Lord anointed you to be prince over his people? And you shall reign over the people of the Lord and you will save them from the hand of their enemies. Now understand the gracious intention of the Lord here. It was the intention of the Lord to deliver Israel from all their enemies, from the Philistines. And so right out of the gates we see that the Lord, even in this mess, what we see towards Israel is nothing but good intended. It's really powerful if you think about it. They've just rejected them. And still, after all these years, after all these years, after the same old things, here the Lord is still concerned to deliver them. It's a beautiful thing. He gives three signs that are here going to validate this anointing. You'll notice that there. He says that two visitors will tell you that your donkeys are found, three men will give you bread and wine, and a group of prophets will come to you prophesying. All this is coming, And it was meant to validate what had just happened, that he is the anointed one. So here we are. The king has been anointed. You'll notice here then that there's this strange moment in the narrative. And this is something we're going to come back to in this book, something that has perplexed a lot of people, but something that I characterize as the empowering of the king. It's a strange event in verse 10 when Saul comes to Gibeah and this group of prophets meets him and Samuel said in verse 6 that the Spirit of the Lord when this happens will rush upon you and you will prophesy and you will be turned into another man. Verse 9 says that when he left, God did this. God gave him another heart. And as soon as these prophets began prophesying, Saul began prophesying. He began speaking. He began proclaiming. He began testifying. And everyone is bewildered by this. Who is this? Isn't this the son of Kish? Is Saul among the prophets? It became a proverb. Is Saul among the prophets? Who in the world is Saul? Now, it's hard not to stop here for a moment and say that this has led to a lot of discussion throughout history of the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. And you'll notice here that the Spirit rushed upon him it was clearly distinguishing the spirit's work here this passage is distinguishing the spirit's work from what we know david would say that that god would say that he would never take his spirit from david what we clearly have here is a different kind of operation of the old spirit for the office of this established monarchy for the king it was it was a kind of coming upon him to strengthen him for the office. It was another way of validating that this was something that the Lord had put his stamp of approval on. In fact, that's contrasted at the very end that these worthless fellows said, who is this guy? I don't have any respect for him, and we'll be looking at that attitude toward it, which is something that the Lord dealt with. Not only was he anointed, he's been empowered to be the king. And then we read that Saul here is proclaimed to be the king. You'll notice in verse 20 that Samuel brings Israel to Mizpah. And as they drew lots, it fell on Saul and he's presented. Notice what happens here in verse 24, that the Lord's chosen. There is none like him among all the people. And all the peoples, when they put their eyes on Saul, said, long live the king. There was a long history with that little phrase. So, you have just had in this section the anointing, the empowering, and the proclaiming of the king. And the king has been really, in a sense, installed. In and of itself, this is really remarkable, isn't it? What's just happened. I still can't get over the tension here of the text. This is what I was going back and forth. This is what is so important to notice. The tension between their disobedience, belonging here in the Old Covenant, and the deep desire of the Lord through their disobedience, still showing His desire to shepherd them. In fact, I want everyone to look at verse 18. Look carefully at verse 18. thus says the lord i brought you up out of egypt i notice this i delivered you from the hand of the egyptians and from the hand of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you but today you have rejected your god who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses and you have said to him set a king over us um clearly a rejection of the lord the lord is saying this is a terrible thing you've just done. What's interesting is the construction of this. Whenever you have this construction, I've done this. Here's what I've done. And now here's what you've done. You've broken the covenant. What do you expect? Judgment. Judgment. The moment here is interesting. You've rejected your God, and then what immediately follows that in verse 18? Notice carefully there what he says. You have rejected your God who saves you from all your calamities, and you have said to him, said a king, now therefore, what do you expect? Present yourselves before the Lord by your tribes and by your thousands. Is it a judgment? Well, that depends. See, this is the tension. Is it a judgment that He gives them Saul? That depends. On the one hand, what an awful thing to reject the Lord rule in your life. You feel the commandment here, right? I am the Lord your God who did this. I am a what? A jealous God. I am jealous for Israel. They're my people. I don't cast off my people whom I foreknew. Paul knew that. That they would enjoy him, that they would enjoy his leadership, his care, his lordship. Remember the instructions for king that was given in Deuteronomy 17? I read them last time, but I want you to hear them for just a second. When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me, you may set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as a king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you who is not your brother. Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses. Since the Lord said to you, you shall never return that way again. I mean, listen to his care. And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, you're thinking of Solomon, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver or gold, and when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law approved by the Levitical priests, and it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, by keeping all the words of this law and the statutes and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers that he may not turn aside from the commandment either to the right hand or to the left so that he may continue long in his kingdom he and the children in israel when samuel brings a lawsuit in the next chapter chapter two chapters in chapter 12 he says something fascinating if you will fear the lord and serve him and obey his voice and not rebel again the commandment of the Lord, and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, it will be well. You hear that? But if not, the hand of the Lord will be against you. Clearly we're in the old covenant. Here we are. Here's the terms. If you and your king do well and you serve me, it will go well. If not, my hand will be against you. In a sense, this whole thing's been renewed and in some way, a Sinai-like phenomenon now with the monarchy. Here's what I get. Even after all this rejection, here we see the Lord's covenant of grace working in this, desiring through this to keep His people. and i believe as an application point that this is a huge point for us that when we refuse the lord this way when we see the lord and all that he's done for us and struggle with turning from him and fighting against him you need to see here the lord allowing in his will a form of chastisement that israel is about to suffer terrible consequences for this because they're going to break these terms but that through it all and i'll come back to this in a moment he has a much better plan that he's going to work out for them and and i think that reminds us constantly that in all of our failures when everything seems to be going bad when everything seems to be turning against us that we can look to a passage like this and see god still through this never abandoned them he always had the intention to shepherd them through a king but just hold that hold that um you can't help here to see that in verse 23 where samuel presents saul now and this is what we're looking at briefly here is now the character of this king a short section here on the character of this king what is this king like what's the notice it carefully in verse 23 Samuel presents Saul we read that he stood among the people he was taller than any of the people from his shoulders upward when he was first introduced it was said of Saul that he was a handsome young man there was not a more handsome man in Israel than Saul I mean they got the best looking guy they could possibly get from his shoulders upward he's taller than everyone in other words the sense you get is the lord gave them their dream king it'd be interesting to go around and say well who who would you pick right uh to lead you and to be and this is always kind of nervous you know um when a pastor leaves the church who's the congregation going to get um i was i was worried about that in linden who would they get what would they think and you're always worried about you know some really big stud coming in there who's just charming and who is just powerful right well Stromberg was powerful but whether he was charming is another he's my dear friend so I can say that my point is is that you worry about you think about these things that people look outwardly people look at all the wrong things you'll remember that when after this mess, the Lord sends Samuel to pick the anointed king whom the Lord has. Samuel starts surveying the sons of Jesse. Oh, there, he's got to be him. Remember what the Lord said? Do not look at his appearance or his physical stature because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. What we're seeing already is what we have is a king whom they've only looked for and only want outwardly. Everything they could imagine outwardly. But there's been no recognition of the character of this man in the heart. Is he a king? Okay, that's the first thing. If you look carefully, then secondly, notice here, there's no knowledge. When the donkeys were lost, he never went and found them. he's not a shepherd there was no knowledge of samuel he didn't even know the lord's prophet saul but the interesting thing is this notice we read in verse 14 that his uncle comes to him after he had just prophesied among the prophet and the uncle says to him hey where did you go to seek the donkeys and we couldn't find them and his uncle said well well you went to samuel well, what did he say? Please tell me. And Saul said, well, he told us that the donkeys had been found. Listen to this. But about the matter of the kingdom of which Samuel had spoken, he didn't say anything. He prophesied, but not about the kingdom. Further, when they seek to find him, to proclaim him king, they can't. He's hiding. You may say these are just little details. They're not just little details. Do you see the picture? Summarize. He loses a flock. He gives up finding it. He doesn't know the word of the Lord. He refuses to speak of the kingdom. He hides himself when summoned. Just like he would in front of Goliath. All of this is presented negatively. He's no king. He's no leader. He's no shepherd. The first battle with the Philistines, he directly disobeys the commandment of the Lord. After the Lord said, if you obey, it'll go well. He disobeys. The whole thing's over. Right out of the gates. This didn't take long. I come back tonight to the thought that the Lord desired to be their king. Even in this mess, he wanted to rule. them and be their king but from the beginning the request was all wrong because they didn't want him he'll rule us through through men but it's he who's ruling us are we a people tonight who understand how wonderful the lord is that he takes his seat and he rules us with a gracious reign or are we like israel constantly running around in our lives with no concept that we do have, and I know this is hard for Americans to say because we don't think in kingship terms. We have a king. I think Christians today have fallen into the terrible trap of looking so much to earthly leaders to deliver them as the culture changes. I really worry about this. I'm concerned about this. Yeah, we want a leader who does the things that are going to keep us apart from all persecution. Of course I want that. But I wonder if really what we're seeing among Christians is Christians in retreat mode and looking in all the wrong places for deliverance in our day. And all of this expression of looking and putting our trust in princes right now is really a struggle that we don't have any confidence that the Lord is reigning over us. I struggle with it. I do it. Do you know the Lord's reigning? Do you know the Lord has your life? Do you know that He is caring for you and shepherding you and watching over you? Now listen to your King. Why was He anointed, Jesus? Because He's been ordained by God the Father and anointed with the Holy Spirit to be our chief prophet and teacher. Wait, Saul tried it. He's not your chief prophet and teacher, Israel. Who fully reveals to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption. He hold anything back from you? Did he speak of the kingdom? Did he openly proclaim his kingdom amidst the kingdoms of this world? When Saul will go out on the battlefield and try to offer his sacrifice, it was a gross violation because he's not a priest. But Jesus is who would lay down his life and become the sacrifice for his people. And Jesus is our King who governs us by His Word and Spirit and defends us and preserves us in the redemption that He's already obtained for us. At the baptism, I want to close here in a minute, but I want you to think of a few thoughts with me for a moment to trace this out to the New Testament. At the baptism in the Jordan, remember what happened? An anointing. This is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. Hear Him. Remember what happened? The Holy Spirit fell upon Him. and in the next scenes you know what happens jesus goes out and he starts doing what speaking the spirit of the lord is upon me said jesus because he's anointed me hear that he's anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor he sent me to heal the brokenhearted to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. Set at liberty those who are bruised to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Saul said nothing about the kingdom. He proclaimed that kingdom far and wide. And then when the people asked and wanted to crown him as the king, he knew exactly where that donkey was exactly where that donkey was go get it and he gets on that donkey and we're wrong about that donkey you think it's all about humiliation he's a king that's what that's what donkeys wrote on that's what kings wrote on donkeys he gets on that king he gets on that donkey the king and he rides up to the jerusalem hill and they're all laying palm branches at his feet saying, Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! He's declared! He's the king! And he rides right up to Golgotha, and he dies for you. That's your king. And then he got out of the grave. God raised him from the dead, and he went and ascended, and He took His seat and today, right now, He's shepherding you and He's praying for you and He's guarding and keeping you. Stop putting your trust in anyone else. He's your King. What a man He is. He's won the battle. Long live King Jesus. Amen. Heavenly Father, thank You for showing us this in the Old Testament, the failure of Israel and Your loving kindness always intended to bring forth the true King. As this story unfolds, we're going to see marvelous things. But it always takes our eyes back to Your faithfulness and what You've done in giving us One who knew where the donkey was, who rode up to Golgotha, and the high priest who died for us, who has proclaimed the kingdom as our prophet, our chief prophet to us, and today rules us by the Word and Spirit so that we share in this anointing. May we then follow and trust Your wonderful reign in our lives. May we confess the Lord Jesus. May we become living sacrifices of thanks. May we live under that reign, fighting sin in our lives, knowing that we belong to a King who loves us and will never fail us. Thank you for hearing us tonight. In Jesus' name, amen.