Facing the Big Test - Part 2

Saul’s challenges – Breakdown of Total Defense

Military Defense

  • Out-numbered - 1 Samuel 13: 5 , 1 Samuel 13:15
  • Loss of pre-emptive strike option, 1 Sam 13:5
    • Example of the experience in the Air Force
  • Inferior technology – 1 Samuel 13:22

Economic Defense

· Agriculture - 1 Samuel 13: 19-21

· Israel cannot sustain a war for more than three weeks

Psychological Defense

  • 1 Samuel 13:6, 7

Social Defense

  • Disunity
  • 1 Samuel 13:8

Civil Defense

  • 1 Samuel 13:17-19

The text wants you to feel, wants you to experience the overwhelmingness of the circumstances, so it describes the massive army as “the sand on the seashore.”

  • It was impossible. The circumstances are dire. The response of the people is fear.
  • I want you to feel the intense pressure that’s around him, the circumstances that cause the people of God to shake in their boots.
  • He determines that his circumstances override the command of God. He evaluates what’s going on, the Philistines are assembled to battle against them, the people are hiding in caves, everything seems to be falling apart; so he decides, “You know what; my circumstances allow me a trump card.”

Do you know what he says about God’s word then? He says God’s word is flexible

  • We justify their disobedience of God's commandments by making excuses similar to the ones enumerated here. That threatening, inconvenient, dangerous, uncomfortable or perplexing situations confront the child of God cannot justify disobedience of God's plain commandments. The fact of one's violating God's law reluctantly, or even sorrowfully, does not endow the violation with any acceptability. The final word that must be written over every man's record is, "Which one of them did the will of the Father"? (Matt. 21;31).

1 Samuel 13:11 - And Samuel said, What hast thou done? And Saul said, Because I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that thou camest not within the days appointed, and that the Philistines gathered themselves together at Michmash

1. He took God’s Word lightly

  • Neh 8: 2-3, 7
2. He disobeyed the Word of God

What was the consequence?

1 Samuel 13:13-14 - And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the LORD thy God, which he commanded thee: for now would the LORD have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever. 14But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the LORD hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the LORD hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the LORD commanded thee.

The consequences of sin are real

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