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Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
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1 Samuel 13:13
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‘And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly in that has not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which he commanded thee’ – an understatement. Wasn’t it indeed incredibly foolish? His situation was so dangerous. He had a mere six hundred men. Everyone had deserted, and there are these Philistine with thousands upon thousands, and chariots and cavalry, and for the sake of a couple of hours, he thinks he can go ahead without Samuel and without properly calling upon the Lord, and receiving instructions from God. That is barely foolishness; that is madness. Never more did he need the help of God in his situation. So he dealt foolishly, and of course faithlessly. ‘For now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever.’ You would have had a noble place, ‘but now thy kingdom shall not continue: the LORD hath sought him a man after his own heart’, a man who identifies with God and his tastes and his methods, and wants God's agenda to be carried out. So David would soon be sought. That is something we have to learn if we would have instrumentality: we want to be after God's own heart.
Application
These are disappointing chapters in a way. We have been looking at Saul, a phony, not a true believer. The people with their emotional repentance, and their emotional pledges to God, which don't last five minutes. But the chapters also tell us those precious differences between the phony and the true. The true believer is somebody who has experienced genuine repentance; the true believer is conscientiously concerned to strive to obey the Lord; and the true believer has faith in the Lord, and trusts him. Those are three vital distinctions, and with that we must lay these things on our own hearts, and close for this evening.
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