Amen. Our Old Testament reading this evening is from 1 Samuel, chapter 11. As we continue in our Sunday evening series in 1 Samuel, and where we find these Spirit-given words, which like all of Scripture, as Kenneth already alluded to, all of Scripture points to our gracious King, Jesus our Savior. I wish Kenneth had told me about that great illustration he used before the service, too. I would have used that. But we're complementing. It's all working together. Our gracious King Jesus. But first, let's read this Old Testament narrative. First Samuel, chapter 11, beginning in verse one. Then Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh Gilead. And all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, make a treaty with us and we will serve you. But Nahash the Ammonite said to them, on this condition I will make a treaty with you that I gouge out all your right eyes and thus bring disgrace on all Israel. The elders of Jabesh said to him, give us seven days respite that we may send messengers through all the territory of Israel. Then if there is no one to save us, we will give ourselves up to you. When the messengers came to Gibeah of Saul, they reported the matter in the ears of the people and all the people wept aloud. Now behold, Saul was coming from the field behind the oxen. And Saul said, What is wrong with the people that they are weeping? So they told him the news of the men of Jabesh. And the Spirit of God rushed upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled. He took a yoke of oxen and cut them in pieces and sent them throughout all the territory of Israel by the hand of messengers saying, whoever does not come out after Saul and Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen. Then the dread of the Lord fell upon the people and they came out as one man. When he mustered them at Bazak, the people of Israel were 300,000 and the men of Judah 30,000. And they said to the messengers who had come, thus shall you say to the men of Jabesh Gilead, tomorrow by the time the sun is hot, you shall have deliverance. When the messengers came and told the men of Jabesh, they were glad. Therefore the men of Jabesh said, tomorrow we will give ourselves up to you and you may do to us whatever seems good to you. And the next day Saul put the people in three companies and they came into the midst of the camp in the morning, watch, and struck down the Ammonites until the heat of the day. And those who survived were scattered so that no two of them were left together. Then the people said to Samuel, Who is it that said, Shall Saul reign over us? Bring the men that we may put them to death. But Saul said, Not a man shall be put to death this day, for today the Lord has worked salvation in Israel. Then Samuel said to the people, Come, let us go to Gilgal and there renew the kingdom. So all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal. There they sacrificed peace offerings before the Lord, and there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever." Let's look to Him once again in prayer. King Jesus, our gracious savior, we have much to greatly rejoice in for you are our saving reigning king. And we give you thanks for this, your holy word, and we ask that through it, you would show us more of who we are in you. And by your spirit, empower us to live for you. To the glory of God our Father, through Christ our Lord. Amen. Samuel had anointed Saul as king. We heard about that last week from the previous chapter in our study of 1 Samuel, and we discussed the timing of that. It was the day before that we considered that passage. That King Charles was anointed as part of his coronation ceremony, that anointing of King Charles done in private behind those beautifully decorated screens. Only he and the Archbishop of Canterbury and an assistant were there. A private moment between the king and his god, as tradition would have it. And similarly, Samuel had anointed Saul, king of Israel, in private. It wasn't a public affair. It was done in private. And so God had provided assurances to Saul and to Israel that this anointing really was from God's hand. It wasn't just an anointing that Samuel had decided to do. It was an anointing from heaven. It was a divine anointing. God had truly sanctified or set apart Saul to be king of Israel. So as we saw last week, several assurances of that were given to Israel. But another assurance was called for, namely a military victory. That's the assurance that the people really needed to believe that Saul was their God-ordained and anointed king. So let's consider this and how it pointed to Israel's greater king under two points this evening. First, Israel's victorious king then, and second, Israel's victorious king today. First, Israel's victorious king then. God provided Saul a chance to prove that his kingship was divinely inspired by providing an enemy for Saul to defeat. Every king needs an enemy to defeat, right? And so God provided Saul an enemy to defeat to prove his kingship. was from above. Nahash, the Ammonite, provoked Israel by surrounding the town of Jabesh Gilead. According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, Nahash was the king of the Ammonites. The Ammonites were descendants of Ben Ammi, that son of Lot and one of his daughters. You may remember that story. And according to the scrolls, Nahash had been gouging out the eyes of his enemies here, there, and everywhere, including the Gadites and the Reubenites. And so you can understand why the men of Jabesh-Gilead were, you know, so acquiescing to this besieging of their town by Nahash. Basically, we'll serve you, just don't kill us, right? It's possible that Israel's insistence on a king was in response to this spreading oppression at the hand of Nahash the Ammonite. Israel wanted a king who would subdue Nahash and protect Israel from such foes. When Nahash informed the men of Jabesh Gilead that the terms of peace with him would mean that he would gouge out all their right eyes and thus lame and shame them and make a further mockery of Israel, the leaders of Jabesh said, let us think this one over. We're not sure we're quite ready to sign that treaty. Or as the language of the Old Testament was used, the cutting of a treaty, the cutting of a covenant between kings, sometimes between God and his people. Here it would be a cutting of a covenant between kings. And typically when you have the cutting of a covenant, as we see back in Genesis with God and Abraham, you would have animals that would be cut, slain in two, and they would The kings would process together through the slain animals, through the body parts of these slain, divided animals, signifying that if I don't keep my end of the covenant, this will happen to me. And, of course, when God made a covenant with Abraham, only God passed through that, showing that this covenant was a covenant of grace. It was a unilateral covenant. It was a covenant dependent upon God and His saving grace, not dependent upon Abraham and his works. But that cutting of animals And the use of the blood of the animals in covenants was the typical thing. Well, Nahash didn't talk about cutting up animals. He's talking about gouging out the eyes of those whom he was going to enslave. So the leaders of Jabesh Gilead understand and said, look, can we think this over? Can we have a week? And they send out word of what's going on, hoping that someone in Israel will stand up to the task, as we'll later hear, of a giant, a Philistine named Goliath. And the question was, is anybody gonna come forward and defeat this foe? And the next king of Israel is gonna do that as a young boy. But now the question is, is anybody gonna step forward from all of Israel and save Israel by defeating, subduing Nahash, this bully? And they spread the word of what was happening. Well, not too many people volunteered. In fact, no one volunteered. Instead, they wept because they thought that they were defeated. They were hopeless. But when Saul, God's anointed king, heard what was happening, the spirit of God rushed upon him and his anger was greatly kindled. Literally in verse six, his nostrils were greatly aroused. You know how it is when somebody's nostrils flare. That's the idiom that's used here. And this idiom is sometimes used in scripture of God himself. His nostrils were flaring. It's used to describe God's righteous anger. That's the only kind of anger God has, this righteous anger. So this indignation was from God. And it's a good reminder to us that some anger is righteous anger, anger about injustice or oppression. That is the kind of thing Saul was experiencing here as the Spirit of God rushed upon him." So he took a yoke of oxen, that is a pair of oxen, two oxen, and he cut them in pieces and sent them all over Israel and said, if you don't follow Saul and Samuel into battle, this is what's going to happen to your oxen. In other words, Saul was being what we used to call a man. You remember that? A man. He was being what's called a man. He was standing up to a bully. And he was calling on others to join him in doing the same. He said, I'm gonna put my foot down to this bully Nahash, and I'm calling on you, the men of Israel, to do the same. And guess what? It worked. He appealed to their sense of duty. He appealed to their sense of of justice, and it worked. they came out to follow Him. And He promised them in verse 9, tomorrow, by the time the sun is hot, you shall have salvation. Now what does that mean, by the time the sun is hot? Is there ever a time when the sun is not hot? What does that mean? Well, it's another idiom. That means noontime or there about is when the heat of the sun is fully felt. Literally speaking, it's not when the sun is hot. It's when you feel the heat of the sun most fully. By that time, the promise was that Israel would be victorious. And that is exactly what happened. They attacked the Ammonites in the morning and struck them down until the heat of the day. This is what the people needed to be convinced that this anointing of Saul, this coronation of Saul was not just something that Samuel had thought up. And it wasn't just because that Saul was quite delightfully the handsomest and the tallest man in all of Israel, the one that they could post on social media and say to all the surrounding nations, look at our king, isn't he great? but this anointing, this sanctification, this setting apart of Saul was actually from God. The people were so convinced that Saul was their divinely appointed king, their loyalty was so quickly developed towards Saul that they told Samuel to bring out the men we read about last week at the end of chapter 10, the worthless fellows. Don't you love that phrase? Worthless fellows who had said, how can this man save us? These men who despise Saul, they despise, they question his kingship, and they did not pay homage to him. How can this man save us? And you remember, it's worth repeating, that in response to their taunting, Saul held his peace. It's a great picture of self-control. Saul held his peace. Literally, he was as a deaf man to what they said. He didn't take the bait. He did not retaliate. In that moment, he embodied the truth of Proverbs 1911, which says, good sense makes a man slow to anger. And it is the glory of a man to overlook an offense. The glory of a man to overlook an offense. To basically take a deep breath, act like it never happened. and get on with what God is calling you to do. That's what Saul did. And we see that he continued in that same spirit here. When the other said, bring out those worthless fellows, bring out the naysayers so that we may put them to death. Saul, the one whom they offended, or Saul to offend, Saul said in verse 13, not a man shall be put to death this day, for today the Lord has worked salvation in Israel. Saul saw the big picture, the big picture of what God was doing such that he wasn't going to waste his time with those who were taunting And in so doing, Saul proved that his indignation had not been about himself or his own glory. It wasn't a selfish anger. His indignation had been on behalf of Israel. His desire was to protect Israel in the face of her oppressor. And his indignation had been about the besmirching of God's glory. What motivated him here was God's glory. Nahash wanted to make a mockery of Israel, God's people. Saul said, not on my watch. God's name is attached to his people. God's glory is attached to his people. And so I'm going to stand up to you, Nahash. So this was a spirit led indignation and it was a spirit led salvation as well. In response to the victory, Israel held a religious coronation service at Gilgal, offering sacrifices to the Lord and worshiping him there. So with peace all around them and with the aroma of peace offerings rising up before their God, Saul and all of Israel rejoiced greatly before the Lord. That's the proper response to salvation, to deliverance. Great rejoicing. Thus we see Israel's victorious king then. And in the second place, this pointed forward to Israel's victorious king today. Saul's victory over Nahash on Israel's behalf pointed forward to the victory of Jesus over our enemies today. One of the most interesting features of the story we've considered this evening is the name of the Ammonite king who was terrorizing Israel, gouging out eyes and threatening to do so to every man in the land. The name Nahash literally means serpent. So we can't help but think of that serpent of old The bully of bullies, the father of lies, the author of death, who seeks to kill, steal, and destroy the image bearers of God. He seeks to take away our sight. He seeks to gouge out our spiritual eyes by which we see the beauty of God and all that he has made. This Nahash, this serpent seeks to bully and intimidate us and take away our trust and our joy in our king. You need to understand. This Nahash is working 24-7 to rob you of the joy that is yours in Jesus. It's what he's doing 24-7. He's seeking to steal what is yours by right as a child of God. The assurance of God's love, the joy of your salvation, the joy of the Lord as your strength. He's seeking to take that away from you. He seeks to oppress and enslave you with fear. But just as God raised up Saul to defeat Nahash, so he has raised up Jesus to defeat the Nahash of all Nahashes, the serpent of old, and with him his worthless cronies, those worthless fellows called sin and death. Our catechism tonight was most instructive. Jesus fulfills his office of king both in his state of humiliation and exaltation. Jesus fulfilled his role as king in his humiliation, in his humble incarnation, in his life of humble service and in his death on the cross. Even his naysayers ridiculed Saul and said, how can this man save us? He's no savior. He's no king. So the religious leaders of Jesus's day taunted him. Matthew 27 beginning in verse 41 tells us the chief priests with the scribes and elders mocked him saying he saved others. He cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel. Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusts in God. Let God deliver him now. If he desires him, I mean, how nasty is that? If God really desires this Jesus, if he really loves this Jesus, if he really cares about this Jesus, well, let God deliver him now. For he said, I am the Son of God, Like Saul, Jesus held his peace. And for us in our salvation, he did not give in to their taunting and come down from the cross. He could have done that. I'm going to prove them wrong right this minute. He could have, but he did not do that. He stayed on that cross. until he paid for every last one of our sins, until he died in our place. He did so as our king, as he wore a crown, a crown of thorns, he did so as our king in order to win the victory for us over Satan and sin and death, in order to Crush the head of the serpent of old. And he fulfilled his role as our king in his exaltation as he rose again from the grave and as he ascended to the father's right hand 40 days later. And he will prove it once and for all when he comes again. In his exaltation, he defeated an enemy that Saul could never defeat. Namely, the last enemy to be defeated, death. The Ammonites were swallowed up by Saul and the Israelites, and that was a mighty victory. But death has been swallowed up in the victory won by our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus dealt with an enemy that no one else could deal with. No one's ever been able to deal with it. No judge in Israel, no king in Israel could deal with that enemy. Jesus has dealt with it through his humiliation and his exaltation as our king. Death has been swallowed up in the victory won by our Lord Jesus Christ. And thus you and I can have peace. Have peace. You and I can rejoice greatly in our victorious king. So let us live this week. like who we really are, more than conquerors through our King. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.