(Concluded from page 237.)
We have thus an example in Saul of a man who though little in his own sight at the onset, allowed his nature to turn everything round, which should have glorified God to his heart and conscience (and faith too, if he had it), for his own advantage and self-importance. The illustrious spots in this world's history, along which the Lord had led him, from Bethel to Gilgal, and the transformation which, by the power and grace of God, had already passed upon him, to the astonishment of the people, so that they said “what is this that has come to the son of Kish?” should have made him truly great by keeping him “less than the least” in his own eyes. But it was otherwise; and Saul, ceasing to be this, does what is right in his own eyes, and is again as one of the common people. Nor let us fail to remember the way in which he accounts for his degradation to Samuel: I had “not made supplication unto the Lord; and I forced myself therefore, and offered a burnt offering.”
In one of our church epistles, it is very instructive to notice that “pray without ceasing” is set in order, and jeweled by “rejoice evermore” on one side, and by “in everything give thanks” on the other; and it is added “for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus, concerning you.” The thing which is effectually excluded from this enclosure is that very flesh to which Saul fell a prey (“I forced myself”), when in the moment of real exaltation by grace his heart was lifted up within him. Our rejoicings as well as our thanksgivings should never part company with the word of admonition “pray without ceasing” lest the flesh should connect itself with our mercies, and escape in this way from under the consciousness of its worthlessness in any real service for God. Indeed the judgment of our flesh is of the greatest consequence in a walk with God; as we may plainly learn in the early lesson of Jacob and the angel and their wrestling at Peniel, when the sinew shrank and the name of the patriarch was changed into Israel; or yet more distinctly at the cross, where, instead of wrestling, God condemned sin in the flesh “that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” The journeyings of Saul had this character, as well as that he might have confidence in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as the God of Israel; but the flesh escaped and rendered Saul personally unfit for his anointing; he became of consequence in his own esteem, by the distinguishing bestowments conferred upon him “by grace,” which should have witnessed to him only of the goodness and greatness of the Giver.
If however the faithfulness of God in the ancient chronicles gives us the record of a faulty man as a warning of the way in which human nature may clothe itself with all that the Lord bestows and turn it round for self-exaltation instead of for His own glory, He will not leave Himself without witness, nor us without an example of the right sort. The closing days of Elijah's life may supply this to us; for, as Samuel gave faith's directory to Saul, so the prophet Elijah takes his successor Elisha with him on that remarkable journey which terminated in his being taken up into heaven; and a double portion of His Spirit descending upon Elisha as the witness for God on earth. Their starting point was Gilgal, and from thence to Bethel, where the sons of the prophets met them. And Elijah said unto Elisha, “Tarry, I pray thee, here, for the Lord hath sent me to Jericho. And he said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they came to Jericho.” From thence the prophet went on to Jordan, and so would Elisha, perfecting himself for his future place in Israel and work for God by thus acquainting himself with the spots on earth which were of greatest moment between the departing one and the God of Israel, ere the whirlwind which waited to carry him up into heaven did its work. So identified were these two in every way, that the link on which the blessing of Elisha depended was this, “if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so.” Places of strength and witnesses of divine power on earth had been visited; and now the sources of sovereign grace in the heavens were to be the rule of faith's observance; and true in its own simplicity and singleness of eye Elisha cried “my father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more.” Moreover, he took hold of his own clothes and rent them in two pieces; and he took up also the mantle of Elijah, that fell from him, and went back and stood by the banks of Jordan, and smote the waters and said, Where is the Lord God of Elijah? The waters parted hither and thither, and Jordan gave forth the man upon whom “the double portion” of his master's spirit rested, for the work which lay before him. He “entreated the Lord” and wrought marvelously, “forcing himself” into obscurity and nothingness.
A greater than any of these has since come into this world, and lighted up a new pathway for faith and the communion of our souls. A sword pierced through the mother's heart at His birth, as Simeon told out the mysterious history of the Jehovah's Christ to those around, and to Mary. Ben-oni and Benjamin were familiar names to her, as regarded her son and her Lord, when she stood at His cross weeping, or was the glad witness of His resurrection to the right hand of the Father. The life of Christ during those three and thirty years on earth, and what they unfolded to the anointed eye, are to us what the Bethel, and the plain of Tabor, and the hill of God should have been to Saul; or what Gilgal, Jericho, and Jordan really were to Elijah at his departure, and to Elisha who was left to glorify God in the midst of His people below. Elisha “saw Elijah no more,” but our departed One is the coming Lord; and, instead of an Elisha, we have the Holy Ghost, come down from the Father and the glorified Son of man, to abide with us as the Paraclete while Christ is absent.
There is another stage in Saul's declension and departure from God, which may yet be examined for our profit, on whom “the ends of the ages are come.” Samuel also said unto him “the Lord sent me to anoint thee to be king over Israel; now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the Lord.” At the beginning of Saul's action in this commission to smite Amalek and utterly destroy all they had and spare them not, he promised fair, and gets a thought from the heart of God, who in judgment remembers mercy, though the Amalekites were to be utterly consumed. The Lord of hosts said, “I remember what Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way when he came up from Egypt.” And Saul came to a city of Amalek, and laid wait in the valley. If God would utterly destroy “the Hers in wait,” surely He would remember the Kenites who showed them kindness; so “Saul said unto the Kenites, Go get you down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them; for ye sheaved kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt.” Of old, when Sodom was to be consumed by fire and brimstone, Abraham made intercession with God upon the footing on which Saul was now acting, “this be far from thee to slay the righteous with the wicked, and that the righteous should be as the wicked: shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” This was not the hour of Saul's temptation, though it was close at hand; he “smote the Amalekites from Havilah, till thou comest unto Shur.” But Saul and the people spared Agag the king, and the best of the sheep and oxen, and all that was good; “but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.”
Here it is the first king falls a second time: first, intruding into Samuel's place by offering the burnt sacrifice; and now, in not maintaining his own place as “captain of the Lord's inheritance” in obeying the commandment of God. Again, he allows his nature to guide him, and is betrayed by the seeing of the eye, and the hearing of the ear, and by the reasoning of his mind; till at last self governs his actions, and he becomes separated from the thoughts of God, and thus loses the link of connection between the Lord and what Amalek did to Israel when they came up out of Egypt. How easily we may use whatever God may have given us outwardly, or in the Church, in a natural way, and so make another pedestal for self (like the Corinthians) and lose sight of the glory of God!
The Lord repented that he had set up Saul to be king, and Samuel was grieved, and cried unto the Lord all night; but not Saul, for he had gone his way. Again, Saul has himself and his doings to excuse or to defend, so that Samuel confronts him by asking, “Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.” The spring of this disobedience is thus traced to ignorance of God, and in what He delights; or in self-will, which is rebellion. And Samuel said, “Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.”
“And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned;” but neither his confession, nor the exercise of his conscience and heart under sin, is in the presence of God and His holiness. On the contrary he betrays the fact, that his own great desire is to stand fair in the eyes of the people, and would even make Samuel subservient to this end, just as he had used the advantages of place and position which God had given him as king, for the like purpose.
He excused himself to Samuel for his disobedience of God, “but he feared the people, and listened to their voice;” as did Pilate when he delivered Jesus to their will to be crucified. But Saul cannot rise higher than himself, and would make use of Samuel to recover the reputation which he had lost. “Now therefore pardon my sin, I pray thee, and turn again with me that I may worship the Lord. And Samuel said, I will not return with thee, and as Samuel turned about to go away Saul laid hold of the skirt of his mantle and it rent; and Samuel said, The Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee, and given it to a neighbor of thine that is better than thou.” All that God gave him is forfeited and the kingdom gone, and Saul pursues his downward course rapidly to the witch of Endor, and fatally to Mount Gilboa, where he perishes under the Philistine army.
A few words upon the sin of Saul in destroying the vile and refuse, and sparing the good, may be of service. How could anything be good which was bound up with Amalek? And yet, if this principle be applied to the flesh and the world, which Saul failed to carry out according to the mind of God upon Agag and the land of the Amalekites, how common does Saul's sin appear in this day! Where is the unsparing judgment as to the flesh which accepts the declaration, “so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God,” and where the deep knowledge of oneself that returns the answer, “I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing?” Where is the unsparing hand that, like Samuel, hews Agag in pieces, come he ever so delicately, that takes part with God in the judgment of sin in the flesh, and accepts the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raiseth the dead?
As to the world (like everything in the land of the Amalekites) how few of us have really learned the lesson “love not the world, nor the things that are in the world; if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him!” Will any cast a stone at Saul for sparing the good and the best for sacrifice unto God, and destroying the refuse and the vile? What is the religion of to-day, but Saul's? “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life (and these were the things that guided Saul and were his overthrow) is not of the Father, but of the world.”
“And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the Lord: I have performed the commandment of the Lord.” Solemn words for today; and equally so was Samuel's reproof: “what meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I bear?”
“And Saul said, The people spared the best of the sheep and oxen, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God, and the rest we have utterly destroyed.”
May the Lord give the needed grace to apply all these principles to ourselves, in close self-judgment in His own presence; that so His holiness, and the cross of Christ, may not only be the rule of our faith, but of a more severe line between the Amalekites and the children of God now, and between Agag and the Spirit!
“But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” And again, “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified to me, and I unto the world.” For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
J. E. B.
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