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We have much to praise the Lord
for, and his covenants that he gives to us is certainly one
of the things to praise him for. I'm just going to read a few
verses from 2 Samuel 7 in your bulletin on page 22, or 2 Samuel
7, 12 through 14a. When your days are fulfilled
and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after
you who will come from your body and I will establish his kingdom.
He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the
throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father and he shall
be my son. Father, we thank you that you
humble yourself in giving a covenant with Adam and Eve and with Noah
and Abraham and with Moses and you gave a covenant with David
and the new covenant that you established with us. It is an
amazing thing that you would take sinners to yourself, rebels,
who were once your enemies and yet now you have redeemed and
adopted into your family. And we're so grateful, Father,
for all that you have done for us. I pray as I give an exposition,
a high-level exposition of 1 and 2 Samuel, that this would be
an exposition that would be meaningful to your people, draw their hearts
out in love and adoration to you, and that we would be strengthened
and sanctified as a result. Bless this the time as we continue
to worship in Jesus' name, amen. Well, several years ago, I preached
through every verse that was related to the life of David.
It looks like Rodney's going to be preaching through some
of the passages that I have not touched on, especially the Song
of Hannah, which is an incredibly important introduction to the
theology of 1 and 2 Samuel. What I'm going to do today is
I'm going to give a kind of a bird's eye view of the book as a whole,
which, by the way, I call it a book because in the Hebrew,
1 and 2 Samuel was one book. And you really cannot interpret
one book without the other or you're going to have an imbalance.
Now, whereas Kings and Chronicles each had a single author, Samuel
was written by at least three different prophets, three different
writers. And even though the book takes
its name from the first author, Samuel, he dies in first Samuel
25. So obviously he couldn't write
the next 31 chapters that come after his death. Right. Jewish
tradition holds that Samuel wrote 1 Samuel 1-24 with the remainder
of the narrative being written by Nathan the prophet and Gad
the seer, and certainly the scripture seems to support that tradition. 2 Chronicles 29 verse 29 indicates
that those three prophets did indeed write the entire history
of David. Now I'm not gonna get into the
arguments back and forth on some of that, but I definitely agree
with those who say that the Bible itself declares infallibly that
the book of Samuel was authored by a minimum of three early prophetic
authors. Now, once you understand that
fact, you begin to appreciate the supernatural qualities of
Samuel, because on many levels, it sure does not seem like this
was written by three authors. Samuel, all of its chapters are
seamlessly working together as if they were written by one author.
In fact, the structure of these books is so intricately woven
together, it is astonishing, absolutely astonishing to me,
that there were three authors who wrote it. Even though there
are internal hints of multiple authorship that you cannot deny,
Those authors wove the book together so beautifully with detailed
parallelisms and chiasms and inclusios and other structural
designs that the book is clearly one work. Themes that were anticipated
by the prophet Samuel at the beginning of 1 Samuel are perfectly
matched by Nathan and Gad as if they had conspired together.
Let's write this book and here's the things we're gonna put into
it. The chiastic structure that is begun by Samuel is finished
after Samuel died, but it's finished in a way that perfectly mirrors
Samuel's writing, and you'll see that in a little bit. Now,
if I was teaching a seminary-level course at seminary, I would take
probably at least two hours going through 42 detailed charts that
I have on Samuel that show an unbelievably intricate structuring
of this book from beginning to end. Now, the three summaries
I put into yours, those are high level. They do not do justice
to the incredible structuring of this book that when you dig
into the details of it, you begin to see. Take a quick glance, though,
at the chart that has two triangles on it. It's on the back of your
outline right here. I took this chart from Yaltuda
Rade in the Linguistica Biblica, and I think it accurately shows
the movement in the book. Now, other commentators have,
through their own studies, come to a similar conclusion. But
each of those triangles represents a perfectly symmetrical overview
of success and failure. That's not the only themes, but
success and failure. There are actually chiasms within
an overall chiasm that you see to the left of that chart. that's
kind of sideways there. That's the large chiasm of the
book and there are actually much more detailed layers of chiasms
within that overall one that again when you study this just
makes it an exquisitely structured book. The more detailed structures
that I've not included Each of the elbows outlines some of the
key themes of this book, and especially God resisting the
proud and exalting the humble. That's a theme that keeps coming
through. But His sovereignty and the fact that all of these
things are portraying the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ are
so strongly brought forward. Now, one little curiosity you
might have noticed is that the last little bit of the second
large triangle contains oddly, the first two chapters of 1 Kings,
just like the last little bit of the overall chiasm does as
well. Now, when I was in seminary back in 1981, there were scholars
who pointed out that the last part of the chiasm in 1 and 2
Samuel is missing. It's a defective book. There's
a problem there. It's beautiful, but it stops.
It stops short, almost as if the author stopped writing. And
yet, when you go into 1 Kings 1 through 2, that chiasm is perfectly
matched. And when I first pointed that
out to my professor, Old Testament professor at seminary, he said,
wow, yeah, it does seem to perfectly line up into the second chapter,
but that has to be just coincidence because that was written much,
much later than 1 and 2 Samuel was written. But in the 36 years
since seminary, the chiastic structure has been studied and
studied, restudied, and it's been shown to have been very
deliberately crafted all the way into First Kings one through
two. It is not an accident of history.
And actually, when you study all of the structures of the
historical books, you will see that they are interlocked with
each other by divine inspiration and linked together in a watertight
way by that structure. It's one of the proofs that I
use of the canonicity of each of those books. You cannot reject
any one of those books without of necessity rejecting the other
books. They are all directly tied with
each other. So what happens is a subsequent
prophet, by inspiration, writes his material right into the canon. He connects it to the previous
books that were before. And there is this building that
happens from one book to another as if it was written with one
mind. Now, that should not be a surprise for a Christian, should
it? Because if you believe that the Bibles were inspired by God,
written by prophets, there was one mind behind these books.
It was the divine mind of God. 2 Peter 1 20-21 says, knowing
this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private
exposition, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but
holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
Now we've talked in the past about inspiration being sort
of like God using various instruments, those are the prophets. So even
though God used various musical instruments, so to speak, Every
note of the divine symphony, the score of that symphony that
those prophets played, came from the divine mind of God. Now,
it may be no surprise to you that studying the structure of
the historical books sends shivers of delight down my spine because
I just see God's hand, his supernatural hand, crafting it over the centuries. It is beautiful. It is actually
miraculous. I don't know how any modern author
could write genuine sequential history and manage to do it within
the confines of the interlocking structures of the book. To me,
it shows God's hand. Deuteronomy is tightly connected
structurally with Joshua. In fact, Joshua says he wrote
it right into the book of the law of God, which is the Pentateuch,
right? So he writes the last part of Deuteronomy. Judges is
tightly connected structurally to Joshua, Samuel is tightly
connected to Judges, and 1 Kings is tightly connected to Samuel. You cannot break those links
without rejecting the divine authorship of one of the other
books. And so this is so clearly written that even liberals have
said, Well the only way we can explain this is that Deuteronomy,
Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings were all written
by the same author. That is a ridiculous conclusion
that they have come to but if you don't believe in the divine
inspiration of the Scripture I don't know what other conclusion
you could reach than that, wow this must have been written way,
way late even though there is all kinds of evidence against
that. But there is more to this that shows the supernatural hand
of God in the development of these books. Not only did God
have to divinely control every detail of the writing of 1 and
2 Samuel, he had to control the inspiration of the subjects that
this book is writing about, like Hannah's song that Rodney's going
to be going through. What do I mean by that? Well,
in 1 Samuel 2, she uses, by divine inspiration, she uses the expressions,
my horn, my rock, grave, death, thunder from heaven, exaltation,
being armed with strength, darkness, feet, anointed one. He gives
the king." By the way, she said that before there was any king.
What in the world would possess her to talk about a king? Okay,
the king, he gives the king humble, proud, and expressions of God's
uniqueness, 14 different expressions, and exactly the same expressions
which form the themes of this whole book are used by David
in the last two Psalms in the book, his hymns, exactly those
phrases are used without either one having known that both of
these songs are going to be incorporated into a book to form a perfect
chiasm. The chiasm could not have worked
as perfectly as it does if God had not already inspired those
two people long before the book was inspired. To me, this is
just a marvelous, incredible work of divine divine providence. So I get very, very excited about
the structure of books. I hope you get a little bit of
appreciation from it today. Now theological liberals who
refuse to acknowledge the divine authorship of any books of the
Bible, they've got a hard time explaining both the structural
unity of the book and the clear evidence that it was written
by multiple authors, multiple writers. They go to one extreme
or the other. They cannot account for both. Liberals are still fighting with
each other to this day, and I love to see them fighting with each
other, but they're still fighting to this day. It's one author.
No, it's multiple authors, back and forth. Some liberals, like
Martin Noth, will say that only one author wrote it, but he cannot
adequately explain how it is obvious that the author was a
first-hand witness of events that spanned more than one lifetime.
Various books have proven that the author has first-hand evidence
that he's writing about. Even some liberals admit that.
So how can one author be a first-hand witness to events that cover
135 years? It doesn't make sense. So other
liberals say, well, that's impossible. That could not have been the
case. So they think that a later editor has pulled together first-hand
accounts, and he's put it together into one massive structure. But
then the first group of liberals say, well, that's ridiculous.
And they completely soundly trash that by showing that the very
things that show unity were not written by the editor, were written
by what these guys say are the original historians. And so it
goes, the argument back and forth between those liberals. Right
now, the dominant liberal view is that it's a unity written
much later. But the Orthodox Christian has no problem with
the internal evidence. We believe that the book of Samuel
was written by three prophets, at least three, and these three
prophets reflected God's mind in providentially weaving together
an intricately developed, inspired history that also shows the covenantal
outworking of Deuteronomy, a unified theology of God, and a unified
prophetic perspective. What do I mean by a prophetic
perspective? Well, these are the former prophets, they're
listed amongst the former prophets, and these former prophets were
anticipating that none of the kings of Israel, David included,
or even Hezekiah, if you go off into 1 Kings, 1 Kings and 2 Kings
is structured in a way that shows that Hezekiah was like a second
David, Not even Hezekiah was the Messiah that was prophesied
to come. They're looking forward to the
coming of the Lord Jesus Christ off into the future. So I don't usually get into the
complicated structures of the book. I just do that from my
own comfort level so I understand where the book is going. But
this is so remarkable, I thought I had to share it with you guys.
Now, as I mentioned, the book covers 135 years of history.
There are three main characters being described. There's Samuel,
there's David, there's Saul before David. Samuel becomes an illustration
of how even the ideal judge, he was the last of the judges
was not the Messiah promised in Numbers 24, 17, nor was Saul,
who was the political king after the people's own heart, nor was
David, who was the political king after God's own heart. They
were still looking forward to Jesus. The key chapter of the
book is 2 Samuel 7, which speaks of God's covenant made with David
and with David's seed, Jesus. Jesus is the answer to all of
the failures in this book. The key verse, actually I didn't
have one verse, it's the key paragraph, is 2 Samuel 7, 12
through 14 that we read earlier. When your days are fulfilled
and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seat after
you who will come from your body and I will establish his kingdom.
He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the
throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, he shall
be my son. Now in some ways that was fulfilled by Solomon But
commentators point out, when taken in the context of the chapter
as a whole, that is looking forward to a future descendant of Jesus
who would not only be the son of David, but who would be the
unique son of God. And so as God's son, he will
not have any of the problems of the previous kings or the
kings who would come after David. Whereas David was a type of Christ,
Christ was declared to be the final David. In fact, later prophets
over and over called Jesus David. That's explicit. Everybody agrees
with that. And so I'll skip ahead in your outline and say that
the key word in this book is David. Over and over again in
this book, David prophetically foreshadows the final David.
Whereas David's throne was only a type or a symbol, it is called
the throne of Yehovah. When Solomon, who's also a type
of Christ, sits on the throne, well, 1 Chronicles 29, 23 says,
then Solomon sat on the throne of Yehovah as king instead of
David his father. So there's really rich symbolism
that is going on here, and 2 Samuel chapter seven is an incredibly
important chapter that lays out the Davidic covenant. That's
the last covenant before the coming of Christ and the new
covenant. A covenant that includes even the political realm under
the feet of King Jesus. So you can see I've already covered
some of the Christ of Samuel. David, obviously, is the central
one. But if you look at your outlines, you'll see I have Samuel
as a type of Christ. All of the judges foreshadowed
Jesus. He was the last of the judges.
He was unique, though, in the fact that He kept in one person
prophet, priest, and king, and in many other ways beautifully
foreshadows the work of Jesus. We won't have time to get into
that. And yes, there are sacrifices in this book that point to Jesus. There is a tabernacle that also
symbolizes the work of Jesus in this book. When I speak of
book, I'm speaking of the Hebrew book, right? First and Second
Samuel is one book. There are priests, all of those
are part of the Christ of Samuel, but most scholars say that the
primary picture of Jesus was David. He is presented as the
ideal king. Not perfect by any means, we
know that clearly, but still when he's compared to all of
the other kings all the way through, first and second kings, he's
the ideal that is pointed back to. Like Jesus, he was born in
Bethlehem. Like Jesus he is called a shepherd.
As a shepherd he rules over Israel. He is the king who is said to
be after the king's own heart, 2 Samuel 13 verse 14. And there are many other ways
in which David was a type or a picture or a symbol of Jesus. Now before I give a quick overview
of the book let me note the seven most important themes that are
dealt with in Samuel. First a note of failure runs
all through Samuel. In the first three chapters we
see the failures of Eli and his sons. In chapters 4-7 we see
the failures of Israel as a whole. chapter 8 we see the failure
of Samuel to discipline his sons. By the way this is a common theme
through Eli, Samuel picks it up, well he grew up in Eli's
home didn't he? So Eli, Samuel and David all three of them failed
to discipline their children and their children did not imitate
their good characteristics. It's a very sad aspect of their
kingship. Same chapter, chapter 8 shows
moral failure again on the part of Israel. The rest of 1 Samuel
shows the moral failures of Saul. After a meteoric rise into power
on the part of Saul to be king, he is from chapter 15 and on
shown to have moral failure after moral failure until his destruction
in the end of 1 Samuel. From God's perspective, all the
way back in chapter eight, he says that Saul's gonna be a failure.
You're asking for a king like the nations? Okay, I'll give
you a king. Right off the bat, he's gonna be a failure for you.
So from God's perspective, that was designed to be a failure. Although David rises to power
with integrity and as the ideal king he also shows failures.
Now here's the point, all of those cumulative failures that
you see in 1 and 2 Samuel are designed to impress upon the
reader that they are still looking forward to the promised long
expected Messiah who would be the perfect prophet, priest,
and king without any failure. And when we get to Chronicles
we're going to see that this is one of the differences between
1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings which
covers the same territory as 1 and 2 Chronicles. Chronicles
does not focus on the failures of Israel. There are some failures
that are mentioned But it is designed to be an encouragement
of the post-exilic community, whereas Samuel and Kings was
designed to warn before the exile, to warn people, this is what's
going to happen to you if you are in breaking covenant with
Almighty God. So most of Samuel and Kings is
negative, most of Chronicles is positive. Second major theme
is that this book calls for all kings to be covenantal and not
to be like the kings of the nations who acted independently of God's
law. And even liberals, believe it or not, believe that all of
Samuel is clearly designed to tell people kings must rule in
light of the laws and the commandments of the book of Deuteronomy. They
call it a Deuteronomistic history, right? Instead, what happens? In 1 Samuel 8, verse 5, they
want a king like the nations had. They're kind of tired of
the insecurity that small government provides. Even though it gives
maximum liberty, they're tired of it, and God says, okay, if
you want a king just like the other nations have, I'll give
you one. Saul's his name, he's going to be a king just like
the other nations. It is very deliberate on God's
part. God is giving to them a covenant-breaking
king, because that's what they asked for. And then David is
going to represent a covenant-keeping ruler. Saul is contrasted with
Eli, Samuel, and David, all of whom ruled in terms of covenant.
Those three represented God's delegated authority, which covenantally
only had enumerated, specified, and very limited powers. Saul broke those very, very quickly.
He developed a hugely centralized whereas David returned civil
government back to the decentralized and limited powers of a theocracy,
which is not a bad word by the way. Theocracy means God's rule.
Why in the world would people say, oh we wouldn't want God
to rule? That's what they're saying when they say we don't
want a theocracy. Anyway, it was covenantal kingship
and our series on the life of David went through all of the
practical ramifications of that concept. Now I'm going to skip
over all my material that deals with whether the Davidic Covenant
is based on the Mosaic Covenant or whether it's based on the
Abrahamic Covenant. I think it's an utterly worthless, ridiculous
debate that people are having. They spend entire books, no this
is entirely Abrahamic or this is entirely Mosaic. Every covenant
that God made builds upon and includes all the previous covenants
and the same was true here. So I've got charts and charts
that show the Abrahamic features in the Davidic covenant, as well
as the Mosaic features. They're both involved. Third
major theme is God's divine sovereignty. You can see God's sovereignty
not just in the narrative sections of this book, but also in the
poetic sections. You have missed a central lesson
of Samuel if you have not come to the conclusion that God is
sovereign and man is not. Now it may sometimes seem, especially
to the people who are living under those kings, might seem
as if the king is totally sovereign, and yet God shows through the
history that king is not sovereign at all. It's only God who is
sovereign, and His sovereignty is both an encouragement to the
remnant as well as a warning to kings. It's a warning. Any
rulers who defy His law will be broken. God is sovereign. The fourth major theme that is
found throughout Samuel is the sufficiency of God and the sufficiency
of Scripture for all rule. The phrases, the Word of the
Lord, the Lord said, and various calls to obey God's Word are
strewn throughout the book as the only road to success. I'll
just give you one example. In chapter 12, Samuel tells Israel,
only fear the Lord and serve him in truth with all your heart,
for consider what great things he has done for you. But if you
do wickedly, if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept
away, both you and your king. Rulers were constantly tempted
to go beyond the scripture's limits, but doing so always brought
disaster without exception. Now another term for this sufficiency
of God and sufficiency of the scripture is what I like to call
the regulative principle of government. It was the Puritans who kind
of came up with that idea. But what the regulative principle
of government means is that civic rulers must be 100% regulated
by the scripture. They may not go one iota beyond
what God's word has regulated, in other words given to them,
and that the scriptures are sufficient for everything that the government
is allowed to do. And you can see that principle
presupposed throughout 1 and 2 Samuel. As we saw in our Life
of David series, this book is a rebuke to modern nation states,
national armies, Welfare states, universal suffrage, many other
outrageous and anti-scriptural practices. All civics must be
regulated by the word of God. That's the message of Samuel.
Fifth major theme is the jurisdictional balance between governments and
within governments. We call this interposition. And
you see that all through here as well. Now Samuel mentions
three governments, well four if you talk about self-government.
But there's family, church, and civics. And as my sermons on
the life of David showed, God has authorized one government
to interpose itself, in order to protect citizens, to interpose
itself against the tyranny of a tyrant. So, when Jonathan and
Ahimaaz acted as spies against Absalom on behalf of David, and
they risked their lives doing so, here's family governments
interposing themselves against the civil government. And so
was the lady who hid them, by the way. When Ahimelech gave
Goliath's sword to David in 1 Samuel 21, it was an example of church
government interposing against civil government. So was Abiathar's
joining of David's ranks. When Jonathan stuck up for David
when his father was trying to murder David, it's an example
of interposition within governments, right? And many examples could
be shown that when you're looking at obedience or submission to
governments, it's always a limited submission. It's submission in
the Lord. In other words, those governments
only have the authority to command what God has authorized them
to command. It's limited by God's word. And
my sermon series showed the biblical checks and balances to keep us
from trouble. Now, the sixth major theme of
Samuel is the role of the ark of the covenant as God's throne
within Israel. Very important theme. It's a
throne that cannot be manipulated. It's called the Ark of the Lord
of Hosts. He is the one who calls the shots.
And so when Eli's sons think, oh great, let's carry this ark
into battle. And if we have this with us, nobody can beat us.
They're treating it like a lucky rabbit's foot. God says, no,
you cannot manipulate me. And you try to do that, and it's
going to be a disaster for you. So when Zadok and Abiathar at
the end of 2 Samuel do exactly the same thing when David is
fleeing from Jerusalem, they say, oh, let's bring the ark
with us. This will help us in the battle. David says, no way.
That's going back to the temple. He realizes the ark is over me. I am not over the ark. I cannot
manipulate it. And God's ark in this book forms
a symbol of the throne of God which stands over every aspect,
every authority, every part of life. Even families are blessed
by it. So Obed-Edom, when he's got that
ark within his home, his home is incredibly blessed. So there's
many symbols with regard to the ark. It's a major theme. The
seventh major theme is the prophecy of the Messiah as the Son of
David, and at the same time being the Son of God. So those are
the major themes woven into this book, and they help us to see
the big picture. And I want to now give you a very, very quick
overview of 1 and 2 Samuel, just to show you the hints of how
these are woven through the book. I can only give you kind of a
high-level picture of it. I can't give you all of the details,
but I think I'll give you enough so that you can appreciate it.
Now, before we start on that, why don't you turn to the front
side of your outlines. I've given you a chart here that
looks like this. Main body of Samuel, well, it's
divided up into six sections, you can see there. And the main
body of Samuel has four sections in the middle, but those four
sections are bookended by a theological introduction in 1 Samuel 1 through
7. and a theological conclusion in 2 Samuel 21 through 24. Now because the conclusion is
driving home some theological points, the stories are not going
to be chronological. In fact, David's already dead,
but it's going backward and it's picking some other stories from
David's life to illustrate some of the main themes that we have
just gone through. Very selective, and so what's
going on is the introduction and the conclusion in many ways
parallel each other and they help us to interpret the book.
You can see the major scenes most clearly in the introduction
as well as in the conclusion, but once you see them there and
you see what the author is doing, oh, you see it all through the
book. Okay, so that gives you kind of a map for the book. Now let's start at the first
chapter. The story begins with a Levite by the name of Altena
traveling with his family to Shiloh, which is where the tabernacle
was located then. As a Levite, he was one of the
pastors that God had put into synagogues throughout the land
of Israel. They were scattered everywhere.
They didn't have their own tribal land. They were supposed to be
the pastors. And as a Levite, we can see he was already horribly
compromised. in the fact that he was a polygamist. A polygamist is a person who's
married to more than one wife. And the horrible problems of
polygamy that are described in this story I think fit right
into the period of the judges when people were not thinking
biblically. Not even the pastors were thinking biblically. Another
sin of this pastor was that Alcina was playing favorites with his
wives. which led the less loved wife,
Penina, to envy the loved one, Hannah, and to persecute her.
So verse six says, and her rival also provoked her severely to
make her miserable. Now you don't have to read very
far in the Bible to discover that God's intention was never
for polygamy. It wasn't a crime, but it was
clearly a sin. God's intention, right from Genesis
chapter one, according to Jesus, was that there be one man, one
woman who are united for all of their lifetime in marriage
in any other union than Biblical marriage leads to misery. But
Hannah was not just miserable over her relationship with the
other wife, she was miserable because God had not given her
a son as Rodney mentioned earlier. Verse 6 says, the Lord had closed
her womb. God is the Lord of even fertility.
In Samuel He is the Lord of absolutely every area. of our lives, and
so Hannah goes to the Lord in the temple and prays her heart
out. She vows her son to the Lord, as we saw earlier today,
and God blesses her with a son. By the way, the high priest that
was, that was kind of an odd situation as well. The high priest,
Eli, who interacts with her, misjudges her, he was the last
of the judges before Samuel arose. And if you look at the backside,
this top chart up here, I've given you kind of a roadmap as
you're going through all of 1 and 2 Samuel. It gives you Floyd
Nolan Jones. It's just a snapshot of his timeline
so you can see where you're at in this 135-year history. Story of Hannah, a very fun story.
We're not gonna get into it, but God grants Hannah her heart's
desires. Her son is Samuel and God's Holy
Spirit enables her to pray the remarkable Song of Praise in
chapter 2. And believe it or not this song
introduces virtually every theological and thematic topic that will
be dealt with in the rest of the book. As I mentioned earlier
the very phraseology the Spirit gives to her God gives to David. David expands on it, but he gives
it to David in the Psalms of praise toward the end of 2 Samuel. Now, her speech has all of the
major seven themes that we looked at, but there's especially three
that I want to emphasize. God's opposition to the proud
and exaltation of the humble. So he casts down the proud, he
raises up the humble. She says that despite the presence
of human evil, God is still at work in accomplishing his purposes.
It takes faith to be able to see that, to be able to say that,
that God is sovereign even in an evil world. He is sovereign
over everything. And then third, she says that
God will raise up a messianic king in the future, or as she
words it, Yehovah will judge the ends of the earth. He will
give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.
there hadn't been any kings when Hannah said this. Not a single
king in Israel but the Holy Spirit put those words into her mouth.
In chapter 3 we find that Samuel is made a prophet by God. In
chapters 4-7 we have the story about the Ark of the Covenant
being captured by the Philistines. Now what had happened is the
Philistines attacked Israel. Israel lost big time. So then
they go back to battle and they think, we need a lucky rabbit's
foot with us, we're gonna take this ark, take it into battle,
and God is going to have to fight for us. They said, let us bring
the ark of the covenant of the Lord from Shiloh to us, that
when it comes among us, it may save us from the hands of the
enemy, 1 Samuel 4, 3. So it's really a superstitious belief.
In, Second Samuel, David rejects a similar idea of bringing the
Ark into battle. But anyway, God does not take
kindly to being manipulated and used by Israel so He allows the
Philistines to defeat Israel and steal the Ark. This is God's
doing. He is still sovereign. When the
High Priest Eli hears that the Ark has been captured, that his
morally corrupt sons have been killed, he keels over and he
dies. something God had prophesied
would happen. Why did God prophesy it would happen? Because He cast
down the proud. He exalts the humble. In the
meantime, God shows the Philistines they have no power over Him whatsoever. Just because God left Israel
and He symbolized that by letting the Philistines take the ark
does not mean that the Philistines have conquered Him in any way.
No, they were pawns in God's hand to teach God's theological
truths. Anyway, when the Philistines
put the ark into the temple of their God, Dagon, and they put
it there to symbolize the fact that, hey, our God is more powerful
than Yehoah. Our God conquered Yehoah. What
does God do? He makes sure that Dagon falls
over, his head breaks off, his hands break off, and he lies
prostrate before the throne of God. I mean, it's just beautiful
symbolism there. And in case they didn't get that
hint, God inflicts everybody in that region with horrible
tumors. They get the point. They get
rid of the ark to another part of Philistia and they all get
tumors and they say, we don't want this. Nobody's willing to
take this ark. So they send it back to Israel,
but they send it in a way that shows God's hand. They hitch
some cows that have just gotten calves. So there are milking
cows to this cart. And they leave and they tie up
the calves who are bawling for their mother's milk. And it's
going to take a miracle for these cows to not want to turn around
to their baby calves. But they go straight like an
arrow to Israel and Israel gets its ark back. Now already this
story is illustrating some of the themes of Hannah's song.
God's opposition to pride, wherever it may be, the importance of
obedience to God, that God cannot be manipulated or controlled.
Instead, He is sovereign. And I won't say more about the
judgments that came upon Israel itself when the ark came in their
midst. Some of the same lessons that are being taught. In chapters
8 through 10, the people reject Samuel's sons as judges because
they were corrupt. Okay, it's good that they recognize
these are corrupt sons I don't blame them at all for wanting
to reject them. They just didn't do it right.
Apparently Samuel, as good as he was as a leader of Israel,
was a lousy parent. He imitates Eli in his parenting. And the failure of both parents
sets up a whole series of thematic failures and successes in this
book. And I think the modern church
absolutely must learn from the failures of Eli, Samuel, and
David if we are to avoid covenant succession being broken up. So
Samuel's sons are corrupt judges, but rather than impeaching the
bad judges and replacing them with godly judges, which would
have been the biblical way to do things, The people decide,
you know, let's look to the pagans for their ideas. They seem to
have stable governments that last forever and ever. Let's
have a king like the pagans around us have. In chapter eight, God
makes it clear their desire for a king like the nations around
them was a direct rejection of God and his laws. This has always
been the temptation of governments. And Samuel predicts exactly what
kind of a king that this will be what kinds of things he will
do. He will become more and more tyrannical. And indeed, Saul
becomes a tyrannical king, just like Samuel described. When I
previously preached on 1 Samuel 8, I showed how every characteristic
of a worldly, non-theocratic king looked like the modern,
highly centralized nation-state. So God arranges for a candidate
that will be just like the kings of the world. He will outwardly
be appealing. He'll have a strong, dynamic
personality, but he will also systematically erode the liberties
that the Israelites had long enjoyed under the judges. In
chapters 9 through 14, it shows the success-failure cycle of
the king. who was crafted not after God's
own heart, but he's crafted after the people's own heart. Samuel,
in some senses, is saying, hey, the king and the people deserve
each other. It's pretty obvious. They deserve each other. They
do not deserve better. But initially, the people don't
get it. They're thrilled with Saul's successes. They don't
see the problem. They think we've made a great
decision. So they give more and more and more power to Saul. He's a great king, but they're
failing to notice the deep character flaws in Saul. His insecurity
will be contrasted thematically in these chapters with David's
faith. His pride and arrogance will
be contrasted thematically with David's humility. His inability
to admit to wrong will be contrasted thematically with David's instant
repentance when he does something wrong. Saul's dependence on power
will be contrasted thematically with David's dependence on God.
In other words, Samuel's teaching us that character qualities are
a non-negotiable when you are selecting rulers. It doesn't
matter how good that candidate might be in his political connections,
in his power, his administrative abilities, his warrior abilities. It doesn't matter because his
bad character will bring ruin. So this is just illustrating
a couple of the major themes of the book that were introduced
in the introduction. Saul's character flaws are exposed
in chapter 15 in a battle against the Philistines. And it's clear
from this story that Saul is going to operate in terms of
the wisdom of the world, not in terms of the wisdom of Scripture.
God says, I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for
he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. You know what? When Americans
read that verse and that story, they think that God is being
a little bit overly harsh here. I mean, what is the big deal?
And even the Israelites didn't get it. What was the big deal
with what Saul did? Okay, we'll do it differently
if you don't like that. No, that's not the issue God
is saying. He's seeing a heart problem with these people. Most of the Israelites didn't
catch the difference between a king being conservative, which
Saul was in some senses, and a king being covenantal, okay? Saul was not acting like a covenantal
king and God rejects him as being a candidate because he represents
everything that the Messiah will not be. As Hannah words it, God
exalts the humble and puts down the proud. Samuel's speech in verses 22
through 23, I think gets to the heart of the problem. He says
this, chapter 15, verses 22 through 23. Has 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 heed than
the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of
witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he also has
rejected you from being king." Wow. That's a pretty straightforward
black and white application of the principles of this book.
The proud Saul will start his downfall in chapter 15, and the
humble, unknown David will start his rise to power in the very
next chapter, chapter 16. And of course, The fear and the
trembling of the people when Samuel comes into the town in
chapter 16 already hints these guys are scared to death. He's
coming here and he's not in good favor with Saul. Are you coming
in peace? They're really nervous about Saul. They know that their
strong man could make it tough for them and is willing to harm
anybody who is a threat to his power. And there are other hints
of Saul's bad characteristics that begin to come fast and furious
in the chapters that follow. And so God in his providence
allows two candidates for kingship to develop side by side so that
for all time, for all time, Christians can reject candidates like Saul
and Christians can adopt candidates like David. And we haven't learned.
We have not learned. To this day, Christians support
candidates like Saul and won't vote for candidates like David
because they don't think David stands a chance. If they're conservative,
hey, that's good enough for them. Saul represents a non-covenantal
ruler. David represents a covenantal
ruler. Now don't get me wrong, no human
candidate for office is perfect. David's humility, repentance,
faith, loyalty to God's Law and other characteristics established
him as the ideal king for all time. All that God asks for current
rulers according to Psalm 2 is that they kiss the sun, they
vow loyalty to Him and by His grace they seek to live out His
covenantal principles in the book of Deuteronomy. That's not
much to ask, you are not asking them to be perfect. They are
asking these people to be covenantal rulers like David was. Now, as
can be seen in the outline that has the blue, that's this one
right here, blue arrows, it's kind of like an arched thing
goes up and goes down again. The first arrow there shows the
rise and then the fall of Saul. He shows success in chapters
8, verse 1 through 15, 10, and then shows failure after failure
in chapter 15, verse 10 through to the end of the book where
he dies. But chapter 16 starts a similar
rise to power by David, and interestingly, you think, oh, that spoils the
story. How come David is having a downward spiral as well? Because
he ain't Jesus, right? So it shows David going in an
upward into power and success, and then a downward fall into
disaster for himself and his family following the Bathsheba
event. Of course, it shows one big difference. Because of David's
humility and repentance, his dynasty will be allowed to continue.
So chapter 16 shows the anointing of David, and that story should
also instruct us, I think, in our choice of rulers. David would
have been the last choice for the world's wisdom just as He
was the last choice. They went through all of the
other people, surely it's this one, surely it's this one. He's the
last choice in that chapter. But God's covenantalism and rulership
proves to be the wise choice. These are chapters that I think
continue to inform our politics or our civics today. The story
of Goliath, yet another marvelous illustration that God humbles
the proud and arrogant and exalts the humble who have faith in
Him. And it also illustrates some of the other great themes
in the Song of Hannah. David is initially exalted by
Saul, but when David wins praise for his exploits, Saul becomes
jealous. The insecure and prideful Saul
slowly descended into madness and he tries to do anything he
can to destroy David. David, on the other hand, he
had plenty of times when he could have destroyed Saul and gotten
himself, from the world's perspective, completely out of trouble, but
he refused to do so. He illustrates covenantalism,
not revolution. The two are quite different.
He trusts God, he waits for God's timing, and he does things God's
way even when it would be inconvenient. To me this shows loyalty. It
shows the Hebrew word hesed. And some of my favorite Psalms
in the Bible come from this period of time when David was fleeing
from Saul. In the last chapter of 1 Samuel,
Saul and his sons come to a grisly death at the hand of the Philistines.
2 Samuel begins with the aftermath of Saul's death, and then comes
the surprise. You'd think David would be rejoicing.
Hasn't he been praying imprecatory psalms against Saul? Yeah, but
he loved Saul. I think he was hoping that Saul
would be converted. So here is this song lamenting
the death of Saul and the death of Jonathan, whom he loved even
more. So it is kind of a surprising
lament. By the way, you'll see in the
pattern on here, oh, I didn't put a little triangle, but anyway,
it is a poem that theologically balances the poems that are at
the beginning and the end of the book. So again, there's neat
little structural things that the writer of the book put together
here. Now I can't get into all the
remarkable thematic parallelisms in this book, but I will briefly
mention again the fact that the parallel parts of the story each
have an Ark of the Covenant story. So in the first half of the story,
God's throne, in other words the Ark of the Covenant, leaves
Israel when God abandons Israel. Remember the word Ichabod, the
glory of God is departed from Israel? Well, it departs, it's
representatively departing by the Ark leaving Israel, right?
Now in the second half of the Chiasm David reverses that. David
conquers Jerusalem, renames it Zion because it's going to be
God's capital, and brings the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem
so that Jerusalem will be both the spiritual and the political
capital of the nations. So God God returns to bless humility. And earthly Zion is a symbol
of the heavenly Zion ruling over the earth. So it's a wonderful
image. It's a beautiful reversal. And
then in chapter 7, David tells God that he longs to see God
dwelling in a permanent and beautiful house. And he means by house,
a temple. And God responds, well, David,
thanks, but no thanks. But it's not a complete rejection
of his idea. He says, you know, David, your son's gonna build
the temple. You're a man of war. Symbolically, it needs to be
built by a man of peace, and there's a lot of cool things
that are involved in that that we'll perhaps look at in Second,
First Kings. But he says, you know, rather
than you building me a house, I'm gonna build you a house,
but this time he means by the house a dynasty. And this dynasty
is going to be a blessing. As I have already mentioned,
chapter seven is the central chapter of the whole story because
it relates to all of the theology involved in the Davidic covenant.
This was God's last covenant preparing the way for the new
covenant. God promises that one of the descendants will become
a universal king over the world, and through that messianic king,
God will bring blessing to the entire world. Now, if you take
a look at the chart, Um, you'll see that chapter seven, this
is the one with the blue arrows. You'll see that chapter seven
is the very height of David's exaltation. In other words, it's
the very top of the rounded blue arrow and the very next chapter,
a miserable fall. This is where David, right at
the height of God promising this incredible, awesome Davidic covenant
promises, immediately he falls. Why? Because of pride. David's pride sets him up for
a fall. He falls into sin of adultery
with Bathsheba, gets her pregnant, he tries to cover that up. When
he's not successful he murders her husband, he marries her.
It is an absolute blot, it's a shameful blot to David's character. Nevertheless, when he's confronted
by the prophet Nathan, true to David's character, he repents.
And God forgives him. There are some beautiful Psalms
that are written concerning God's forgiveness here. But here's
one of the points that God does not want us to miss. Just because
you're forgiven of sin does not mean that the fruits of sin are
all washed away. There are laws of harvest that
are going to continue to bring pain into your life. God tells
David, hey, the things you have sowed are things your kids are
going to continue to do. This ought to make us scared
to death about sin, to avoid it like the plague. Why? Because
even though we have forgiveness, praise God for forgiveness and
restored fellowship, there are still the laws of harvest that
are going to be at work. And in the Life of David series,
we saw that David had been sowing the seeds of these disasters
through polygamy and by failing to discipline his children, failing
to disciple them consistently. From here on in it is a downward
series of failures in David's life that leads from one disaster
to another. David's son Amnon rapes his sister
Tamar. Absalom, another brother, kills
Amnon in revenge. Absalom has to flee, which pains
David greatly, but when he finally comes back, he undermines David's
throne, leads to a coup. His best friend abdicates and
joins, not abdicates, changes sides and joins Absalom. Later,
Adonijah engages in another coup. It is disaster after disaster.
David has to hide in the wilderness from his son Absalom, just as
he used to hide from Saul. And again, these parallelisms
in here, just amazing what the author has done. Absalom is killed,
David gets back on his throne, but it isn't the same. He's a
broken man in many ways, illustrating the damage sin can do, even to
a person who is a man after God's own heart. It's clear from the
way that the story is crafted that even David is not the Messiah
to come. He is looking for another, even
as chapter seven had prophesied. Kings will tell you that Solomon
is not the Messiah either. He's only a faint type of Jesus.
And then comes the theological conclusion in chapters 21 through
24 that is crafted very artistically as a chiasm as well. Now the
very first part of chapter 21 deals with the moral failure
of Saul. The very end of the book deals with moral failure
of David. The next section in chapter 21
matches the second-to-last section of the book, both of which deal
with David's mighty men. By the way, the account of mighty
men, if we were writing it, we would just link them all together.
But no, he deliberately breaks apart mighty men here, mighty
men here, so that there could be a chiasm. What's in the middle
of that chiasm? It's David's poems. And these
poems, again, highlight, as we mentioned before, all of the
major themes, but they point forward to the Lord Jesus Christ
as well. So, King Jesus will be the answer
to the failures of all of these kings. In conclusion, I'll say that
the character studies in Samuel are character studies that all
leaders and all followers need to learn from, but they're phrased
in such a way we don't look to them, finally. realize ultimately
without Jesus Christ we will never see the glorious times
of history that the prophets looked forward to when peace
and righteousness will fill the earth. Jesus alone will perfectly
fulfill the Davidic Covenant and provide a rule of righteousness.
So if you now read through 1 and 2 Samuel with these points in
mind I think you are going to begin to see all kinds of new
things you hadn't noticed before that will come together And hopefully
it'll also help you to appreciate even more some of the applications
that came in Rodney's talks on the beginning of the book, my
own talks through the life of David. Well, let's pray. Father,
we thank you for your word. We thank you that it is a light
to our path. We thank you that it is a miracle
gift from your hand and we see the supernatural written all
over your books of the Bible. We love the Scriptures. We love what you have given to
us. Please, Lord, transform us by your word. Make us more and
more like the Lord Jesus Christ and less and less like the failures
that we see in this book. But, Father, may our own failures
not make us give up or be discouraged, but constantly drive us back
to the Lord Jesus Christ through whom we can do all things. And
so bless this your people, Father, with faith, with hope, with a
confidence that if Christ is in us, who could be against us?
Father, we pray these things in the strong name of Jesus.
Samuel
Series Bible Survey
Overview and survey of the books of 1 & 2 Samuel. See kaysercommentary.com for further study.
| Sermon ID | 5141950475661 |
| Duration | 58:18 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 1 Samuel 1:1; 2 Samuel 1:1 |
| Language | English |
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