‘It came to pass, as soon as he had made an end of offering [the burnt offering], Samuel came, and Saul went out to meet him that he might salute him.’ Now we are beginning to discover a whole lot of problems with Saul.
One of the things that's going wrong in evangelicalism is that people – and many of them mean well and are Bible believers – are saying, Well things are so difficult, and the churches are so small, and things are so low, we have got to figure out all kinds of ingenious ways of reaching the people. We can't any longer go by the methods that God has laid down in his word. They are too solemn. They are too straitlaced: these things like the word of God, and reliance on prayer and the Holy Spirit. We have got to adapt, be worldly, and use all kinds of techniques. But we not supposed to think as though we were secular companies, and industrial enterprises. We are supposed to realise we are God's people; we are under his orders. It is foolish if we think we can do it a different way, without his blessing. The more desperate our situation becomes – the more of a minority in a more and increasingly secular world – the more we need the help of God; this is a supernatural work. How foolish to resort to human methods and human wisdom! That is how people think today. We will break God's rules; we will create entirely new methods which are nowhere to be found in the Bible, but we will sanitise them by praying about it, and we will bring them before the Lord in a prayer meeting and just get on with it. But we see this reflected in Saul. He is thinking like a secular general, and not the king of God's people, of the spiritual nation.