King Saul’s story marks a solemn reminder of what it means to grieve the Spirit of God. Once anointed and filled with the Spirit, Saul’s disobedience led to rejection and the removal of God’s favour, even as he continued outward religious acts. In contrast, believers under the New Covenant are promised the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit, never to be withdrawn. The account of Saul, set alongside David’s plea in Psalm 51 and Christ’s teaching to Nicodemus, confronts listeners with the need to be truly born again and to keep obedience and repentance at the heart of spiritual life.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] Well, I’m glad to see us all here tonight and to have fellowship again in the evenings. And I have got a task on my hand I’ve been trying to do well with the storyline of King in the Old Testament who failed. And I’ve been talking about success and failure in spiritual things. And Moses is largely a great success. He did have one failure. But when it comes to there being success and failure, there’s probably not a bigger example of a failure than King Saul. And I’ve had a couple of attempts to get into the topic about him and run away a bit from it because there’s a very big series of questions about Saul and whether he was someone who in the long run we’re going to see in heaven or not. And how much of a success was he before he became a failure and what were the causes?

[00:01:10] And I’ve sort of made a start a few times and pulled out of it. And this morning was one. I was going to continue there on him this morning. But because of the people who came, I didn’t think it was appropriate. And so I gave another message altogether. But we’re back in the storyline about King Saul. And one of the things about him is that his sin grieved the Lord. If ever you want a place in the Bible to look and to learn about whether you can grieve the Holy Spirit, then look again at the storyline of King Saul. Because that’s basically what it teaches you, that he grieved the Holy Spirit. So Prophet Samuel had to tell him. And eventually he had the kingdom. He was the first of the line of kings. I don’t know how aware you are of the fact that in the early days of the children of

[00:02:05] Israel, God pictured himself as king. And so they had an arrangement for when the children of Israel might move camp, when they had to pull up all the stakes and move on. They had a special order that they asked to happen, which would be an order in which they all moved at certain turns, but the tabernacle, which symbolized God’s presence, always moved with them. So they didn’t all move off and race ahead or get lagging behind, but they always moved such that the representation of God’s presence was kept in the middle of them even as they moved. Not a bad thing to learn, actually, is to, in times of change, of where you live, change of what your job may be. To seek to try and keep God as central in the move is a lesson that they teach us from the Old Testament.

[00:03:07] Another question about, of course, it all is the whole issue of whether or not the people of the Old Testament have the same experience of the Holy Spirit as we do in the New Testament. Old Testament times. And it’s been part of what I’ve been seeking to do is to bring forth, bring out, make visible the truth of the role of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. I have to confess that it was the help of our theology group, our apologetics club, that drew my attention to something I actually had an assumption that was incorrect. The assumption was that most of the teaching of the Holy Spirit was in the New Testament. But lo and behold, when you go searching, you find that there’s an awful lot that’s said about the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament.

[00:03:59] And some of it is in the tale, the storyline of King Saul. And what’s more, he gets to be a person who prophesies. Now, it’s a bit hard to look back into time, especially across different cultures and languages and work out what is exactly meant by someone prophesying. At least, you can say, it’s an ecstatic utterance. And whether it is because it’s ecstatic and no one can understand it, or whether it is because they’re actually saying things that are prophecies, I’m not sure what to say, except that Saul was one who was found to prophesy. It wasn’t always his thing to do, but after he was anointed by Samuel to be king, he started doing prophesying, and maybe a little bit before as well. And exactly what that means, it means, of course, that the Holy Spirit was coming on him.

[00:04:56] And one thing about prophecy is that prophecy isn’t something like a learned art. Prophecy is not something that you choose to do because you feel like, I’ll give a good prophecy now. I think you can perhaps shut out yourself prophesying, but I’m not sure that you can just choose to do that every time you wish to, just because you’ve got it in your mind to be a prophet. and if Saul had not begun to be discovered amongst the prophets prophesying then we wouldn’t be able to have a big problem of knowing how to understand him now as we go back in history. But he does give a good illustration of someone who was described as filled with the Holy Spirit and yet he lost God’s presence with him and God rejected him as king and Samuel had to deliver the fact that he had been rejected by God

[00:05:52] and in the final stages of his life he found God was against him. Young David arose to be the next king and Saul was sort of aware of him being blessed of God and tried to get him killed several times. He’s the one that used to play the harp to help the disturbed King Saul get over his problems, his being disturbed and we’re going to look at a little few things in the scriptures about this storyline of Saul and one of the issues we’re addressing is is it possible that the Old Testament people did have the spirit at times and then got lost? What was his final condition one that meant that he became permanently lost? We know in the New Testament that once you become a Christian a part of the becoming of a Christian is that you confess Christ and God gives you forgiveness as you repent of your sin

[00:06:49] and he gives you the gift of the Holy Spirit and the way that’s worded in the New Testament it’s a permanent indwelling that starts and as a Christian, you’re not in danger of God reversing his decision. You can still be a person who gets away from God and can be a backslider. You can still be a person who grieves the Spirit but the Bible doesn’t teach, I believe in the New Testament that he will take his Holy Spirit from you but that was the teaching of the Old Testament and King David in the Old Testament region period he prayed that prayer in Psalm 51 to say, take not your Holy Spirit from me. When he was repenting, he was asking the Lord not, please Lord, don’t take your Holy Spirit. Cast me not away from your presence. You were very quick, that was good. And take not your Holy Spirit from me.

[00:07:44] Psalm 51 verse 11. But that’s not something you have to pray in the New Testament. Because although nonetheless God does discipline his people, and I think I’ve given you one sermon already on the comparison of Saul with someone in the New Testament was Ananias and Sapphira. And they sinned against the Holy Spirit. Peter accused them, what’s made you lie to the Holy Spirit? And their punishment was that they dropped dead at Peter’s feet. Both Ananias, then later when Sapphira, his wife, came in, Peter asked questions to see whether she was in on everything. And when she was, she dropped dead as well. And Peter had to say, the young men are going to come and carry you out like they did your husband. So judgment does come to New Testament people, but there’s no mention that the Holy Spirit left them.

[00:08:36] And so I think that though they were judged for their lying to the Holy Spirit, I think when we get to glory, we’re going to find Ananias and Sapphira are there. I don’t know it just from their story line, but other things that are taught in the New Testament is that God doesn’t take His Holy Spirit from us, even if we grieve Him and go against Him and He has to discipline us. But the Old Testament, I can’t really necessarily say the same, but that’s the issue that we’re looking at a little bit tonight. Now, I’m not going to be able to do it that thoroughly, but we’re going to try by going through some of the verses. And we’ll start in 1 Samuel 8, and verses, is it 14 to 22? 1 Samuel 8, 14 to 22. And I think I’ve given you the wrong reference, so I’m not sure. All right, we’ll go to the next one,

[00:09:42] which is about King Saul. And the Lord had revealed to Samuel, if you’re looking there, verse 15, Tomorrow about this time I’ll send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. That’s the purpose God is doing this for. For I have seen my people because their cry has come to me. And when Samuel saw Saul, the Lord told him, Here is the man of whom I spoke to you. He is who shall restrain my people, or the older versions read, judge my people. And so he was called to be a king. In their day, the person who was a king was someone not only who’s sitting in a palace and making decisions to pass over to the parliament, like might happen in England, but rather what the king would do

[00:10:42] would also be that he’d go out in front of the army and he’d fight for them. He’d also judge them if they had a need to some decision to be made as to who was right or wrong. And he was given this role, but the judging isn’t only just making decisions. It was being someone who acted out God’s justice amongst the people. So he’s been chosen for a very big role. That was 1 Samuel and chapter 10. So in some of the previous spots, it does tell about how Samuel had been worried about the need for there to be continuing willingness by the children of Israel to let God lead and be king over them. Because the early stages of the history of the children of Israel was one where God made himself the king. And as a part of how God liked it, he was the king of his people. But they got into a longing

[00:11:40] to want to be like the other nations. And they complained to Samuel and said to him, please give us a king who’s like the other nations. Someone who will lead us and someone also, when there is a battle, he’ll go out and lead us. And so they cried to Samuel and Samuel took it and rehearsed it in God’s ears and God allowed him to do it, to get a king for the people of Israel. When that happened, of course, it was a backwards step for the children of Israel because having God as your king was a part of what God wanted. He wanted them to be his people and him to be their leader and the one that they’d worship and the one that they’d obey. And now they’re hankering for a more visible king, hankering for someone that’s like the nations all around them they say

[00:12:31] and God gave in to that but it wasn’t going to be for their blessing and especially as Samuel couldn’t stop it happening that even though this fellow Saul was seen to be the one to be chosen because when Samuel investigated he came across him with a group of people around him were prophets and they began the prophets to prophesy we don’t know whether that was back then at that time a lot of ecstatic utterance or something coming out of them that was unknowable or whether they actually came with prophetic words but anyway what it does tell us is that Saul was seen to prophesy with the prophets the Spirit came on the group of them including Saul and he was coming out with this ecstatic utterance and so he was shown to be the one that God had chosen and with the Holy Spirit coming on him,

[00:13:26] it says in one spot that he turned into another man. He had his nature changed. Now if you were to bring the New Testament teaching back in to apply to things in the Old Testament, you’d think that maybe he became what we would call regenerate. Regenerate just is a fancy word to be born new. Regenerate, all right? And to be regenerated is what happens when we become Christians. It’s the offer of the gospel that if you come to Christ for the forgiveness of sins and you come repentant and you come to take Jesus as your Saviour, the Holy Spirit is given to you as a permanent gift. And the first thing that he does is he comes into your person is that he regenerates you to give you a new heart, a new existence before God, a new person to be. and there’s something about the regeneration of being born again.

[00:14:22] I was talking about this this morning in church that when you’re born again God makes you a new person. It’s what Jesus taught in John chapter 3 to Nicodemus and told him if you don’t get regenerated if you don’t get born again he told Nicodemus you can’t even see the kingdom of God. He’s referring to God’s activities on earth and of course also referring to where we go when we die we’re going to go to heaven if we have been regenerated and made ready for heaven. But if there’s never been that moment of coming and doing business with God, getting the forgiveness of sins for which Jesus died and being what is called born again, that’s what this morning’s sermon was on, then we won’t be going to heaven. We’ve got another destiny instead. And in the Old Testament, that promise of the gospel

[00:15:11] was something that was yet to really be delivered. They had a religion that involved being accepted by God in the temple system eventually, when the temple was set up. And so that there was an act of God accepting him and they would be able to experience proper life as someone that’s in God’s family, the Jewish people. But salvation often was used to refer to him keeping them safe in that nation. I believe that if they truly did live the life the best they could through the temple system and getting their sins forgiven by going to the temple when necessary, I believe that we will see some of those Old Testament saints in glory. But that wasn’t the major way it was communicated to them. Salvation was actually God helping them out as a nation and saving them from their enemies.

[00:16:01] And some of the reason why God spoke to Samuel and said that he wanted Samuel to anoint this man to be king was because God would use him to defend the Israel nation from the Philistines and save them from the Philistines overrunning them. And there were periods of time when the Philistines did overrun the people of Israel and many of them had to hide away in caves when the armies of the Philistines came near. And you’ve probably read about lots of stories of the Israelites against the Philistines. There’s nothing more dramatic than the one of little David going and fighting Goliath. and there being this victory over the Philistines that God gives. But a part of the understanding of salvation back then was that God would save the nation Israel from their enemies

[00:16:50] as well as save their people from not being able to be right with him and participate in the temple worship. And I think there’s a sort of assumption that we have and I think it’s not a bad assumption that some Israelite who was right with God and right within their nation would eventually end up in heaven God not being a person I believe that’s going to find easy excuses to send people to hell but I don’t think that the teaching of salvation in the Old Testament is that clear in its own Jesus nonetheless in this morning sermon which recalled our memories to how the Israelites had been complaining badly against God and he sent a plague of snakes which were poisonous and as they were bitten they were dying and they cried out to Moses and Moses was told by God to make a portrait, or not a portrait but a bronze

[00:17:43] snake, put it on a pole and put it somewhere visible and say to the people if you look at that pole with a bronze snake and you believe that God can heal you then he will and Moses did that and the bronze snake was placed where they could see and different ones took opportunity to look and believe and they got saved from snake bite and dying. But whether that means that they be people acceptable to God forever and get into heaven, well that’s probably saying more than what the storyline necessarily assumes. Now here we have a man who actually is prophesying and having the Spirit of God come on him Saul, and he’s the king. God didn’t really want a human king. Actually it’s very similar to what we’re like in our lives, even as Christians we have a spiritual part but we also rejoice in having politics

[00:18:38] in some more visible thing that we can follow and we can have opinions of, especially if you take a study of the politics in America, you’ve got this strange sense in which they’re so very secular. The same people as secular also have had some revivalistic movements among them where they’ve been turning more to God and they sort of combine the secular things with and, but with the belief in God as well. But back in the time that we’re talking about with King Saul, God let him be king, but he wanted his people to still be looking to him. And there’s all those very famous statements in the Old Testament if they were to sin and grieve God and be under attack from Philistines or others, that if they were to repent, if my people who are called by my name shall confess their sin and turn from their wicked ways, then

[00:19:34] will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their ways. And to heal their ways or heal their land, depending on how you translate it, is that God is saving the nation from the effect of outside people like Philistines and the effect of droughts and all sorts of other problems. But in the New Testament the salvation that’s talked about is a salvation largely in the spirit and the heart. And the storyline in this morning’s sermon about Nicodemus being told he had to be born again or he wouldn’t see the kingdom of God is illustrative of the fact that God’s salvation, which is truly a spiritual thing that’s offered by the gospel, is not possible unless you have that born-again experience. And so it raises the question when you’re looking to the Old Testament,

[00:20:21] could you say that this fellow, King Saul, because he prophesied, was he born again? Was he regenerate? And I can scan through theology books and find that there’s just a bit of a hesitancy to try and, of a lot of the writers, to make a statement as to what they think. Because they know that the prophecy of Saul indicates that the spirit is on him. I won’t go through the details. I had a long list of verses for you to be followed, but I won’t get you to have them up there. But in those verses it is that talking about the fact that when Saul got off the track and God took away his kingdom, that nonetheless, even when Samuel was told to go and tell him that God had taken his kingdom from him, nonetheless, because he got mixed in with this group of prophets, that’s the spirit of God moving there,

[00:21:21] came on Saul and he prophesied even when he was about to get kicked out. And then there was a period of time when not only did Saul be angry at God, but get angry at other people who represented God, one of whom was young David. For a start he got to know David because he had this sense when God had rejected him from being king of having a tormenting spirit. And here we’ve got the right spot. The spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and the harmful spirit, that’s what the ESV words are, a harmful spirit. Other versions say a disturbing spirit. Some will conclude it’s an evil spirit. From the Lord tormented him. It raises a question, is God in the business of sending evil spirits on people that displease him? I don’t think you have to read it as an evil spirit, though it’s doing an evil work.

[00:22:14] It’s a harmful spirit. And it torments him. The one reason why David got to know Saul was that David was a harpist and apparently quite gifted. I think people who have music ministry, although you might call it a natural gift, I think the spirit of God can be used greatly. I’m very encouraged by our church and the joy that we have and the hearing, the contributions that they lead us in. And here is this young man who can play the harp. And as you’re fishing for my verses, I guess. And, well, behold, the son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, when it’s asked who can play the harp, who was skilful in playing, a man of valour, because he’s shown himself up of defeating Goliath, remember, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence.

[00:23:12] By the way, can the Lord speak about you as a person of good presence? It’s a rather interesting question, isn’t it? And the Lord is with him and he plays the harp. So Saul sent messengers to Jesse, that’s David’s father, and said, Send me, David, your son, who’s with the sheep. He was the youngest and had to take care of the sheep mostly. And Jesse took a donkey and laden with bread and a skin of wine and a young goat and sent them by David, his son, to Saul. You’ve always got to please the king, so he gives him a gift. And David came to Saul and entered his service. And by service, he was there to play his harp whenever a disturbing spirit from the Lord made Saul get angry and do lots of terrible things. And let David remain in my service, Saul sends to David’s father,

[00:24:06] for he has found favour in my sight. And whenever the harmful spirit from God was upon Saul… Now, I want to say here, this harmful spirit from God shows that God is sovereign over all things, even if it is that he’s let something bad happen to you. I don’t know how to say this and be totally correct or be confident that I haven’t made it some sort of slip of tongue. But I want to tell you that God’s sovereignty covers even the bad things that happen to you. Some of those bad things may be put down to you like they can with King Saul, that he despised to obey. It all went sour for him when he was told by Samuel something he had to do and he didn’t want to do it and he just disobeyed. And God rejected him from being king because he wouldn’t listen to Samuel telling him what the Lord was wanting him to do.

[00:25:05] And this spirit that’s harmful or disturbing or possibly evil, I don’t know, but it is under God’s sovereignty, even everything. If you’ve got a thorn in the flesh, as later Paul admitted that he did, and people don’t know what was his thorn in the flesh, did he, some people think that his eyes were going. Maybe the retina at the back was not getting enough oxygen. Or other people guessed something else in his health. Maybe he had a hip that he couldn’t walk on. Or did he have some other problem? I don’t think diabetes existed back then, but whatever it was, it’s something that wasn’t good. But I think that it is something rather important for us to recognise that God’s sovereignty is not only over the good things that he gets to happen to you, but it is what he allows, the bad things. And in the case of Saul,

[00:26:12] it speaks about the harmful spirit from God was upon Saul. Look at verse 23. And David would take his lyre and play it with his hands. Most of the pictures picture him in a harp, so I’m not quite sure whether, how much of a harp is a lyre, L-Y-R-E. But Saul was refreshed and was well because there’s something in the power of music to be ministering to people. And the harmful spirit departed from him. Now these are things that we learn. Don’t jump to many of our conclusions. We jump to, I know I had to get mine corrected, my assumptions that if anything was bad, it was from the devil. But God sometimes allows how much of the evil world, how much the evil one, how much maybe our evil, has had a triumph over us. He doesn’t do it if you don’t deserve it. If there hasn’t been some cause, David would take the lyre

[00:27:23] and play with his hand and Saul was refreshed and was well. And the harmful spirit departed from him. So there’s a spiritual part to this harmful troubling that God allowed. Now we’re learning something about the sovereignty of God, not to put anything beyond his control or some other cause. You can take that as good news, by the way, because if it’s under God’s control, you can pray about it. And so in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul, who had some health problem, he prayed about it. And God could have done, as he does in some cases, heal him. God actually says, no, I’m going to leave it with you and my grace will be sufficient for you. But God is sovereign over whether you get healed or not too. In our church, if there’s somebody who’s sick, one of the things that they’re encouraged by the scriptures to do

[00:28:19] is to call for elders who will come and pray over the sick person and ask for God to take it away. We’ve done that a few times in this church. We don’t necessarily tell everybody. Not everybody healed that way. Or, how shall I say, not everybody who asks for prayer and is prayed over is necessarily healed. I’ve been involved in that several times in different churches. And I can say that there have been healings and there’s also been times when God stepped in but didn’t heal the disease. Something else happened. You can’t really put God into some sort of lockdown what he must do. He always remains sovereign. And it’s one of the things you want to do if you’ve got something that you’re praying about is to give it over to God and say, whatever you decide, God, I give it into your hands. When you read little books

[00:29:17] of people’s storylines of how they learned how to pray, you come across this again and again of someone who’s praying for a very necessary and important thing and nothing happens. And then they come to the place of saying, okay God, what is your will? Let it be done. And then God acts. Not always necessary to take away the problem being prayed about but in some cases, yes. And whenever the harmful spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand, Saul was refreshed and was well and the harmful spirit departed from him. So this is quite a storyline of a man who’d been king. What’s interesting is is that it does teach us a bit about the presence of the Holy Spirit that although in the New Testament if you’ve become a Christian, you’ve been given the gift, the permanent gift, I might say,

[00:30:15] of the Holy Spirit to live within you, you’ve become regenerate. That means born again and God will never reverse that. He won’t undo your conversion. You may become a backslider and need to come back and say sorry God and get right with him again but you don’t lose the Holy Spirit that you got when you first came. You never have to do what David did when David sinned. Do you know the episode he had with Bathsheba, was it? In Psalm 51, that prayer of repentance of, gee, you’re good tonight, you’re doing well. Psalm 51 verse 11, cast me not, this is in the middle of the prayer of repentance that David prays after he sinned. The prophet has told him that he’s not right with God and he prays this prayer of repentance, Psalm 51. It’s one of the most famous prayers of repentance in the Bible. But verse 11, cast me not away

[00:31:17] from your presence. You know, that’s something very important that you don’t have to in the New Testament pray that God will ever cast you away from his presence. He may make it that he’s grumpy with you and is annoyed at you and convicts you but he’s not going to take away the presence of his Holy Spirit from you. Take not your Holy Spirit from me is what David had to pray because he’d seen about Saul and he was worried that he’d get the Holy Spirit taken from him too so his prayer, Psalm 51, includes this, don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. We don’t have to pray that but I’ll tell you what you do have to pray is that God will forgive your sin whatever it might be and pray that he’ll restore the fullness of his Holy Spirit to you that he will do he won’t leave you high and dry he won’t lead you without the fruit of the Spirit

[00:32:18] coming up automatically from you he won’t leave you with your gifts that otherwise would work well not happening quite with the same force but you don’t have to pray don’t take your Holy Spirit from you unless you simply mean by that don’t take away his hand on me that would be a good prayer to pray and so we’re in a position in the New Testament to be very shocked by the example of Saul who is cast away and people ask the question does that mean that eventually he’ll end up in hell I think so yes because the promise that God would give you the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit so that your state of being regenerated is forever and that secures that you’ll be in heaven with God in the end you may still face a judgment and God punish you or reward you for how you’ve done as a Christian

[00:33:16] but you won’t get thrown out as a Christian you can be sure of it and so that’s the difference between the Old Testament and you and it is that you don’t have to pray as Psalm 51 11 take not your Holy Spirit from me but in the case of Saul he went on sinning and even when people tried to rescue him and came with messages and all he nonetheless he sometimes prophesied just before Samuel delivered that he was being rejected so he had some gift the Holy Spirit gave but I don’t think it was a New Testament experience he had I think he had the presence of the Spirit upon him but he wasn’t regenerated and we’re referring to regenerated because this morning’s message was from about Jesus saying to Nicodemus you must be born again to see the kingdom of God and being born again and knowing that that born again status

[00:34:17] is going to stick with you is the assurance that we have from the New Testament if you’ve come to Christ. If you don’t have any assurance, even though it’s not really an issue as to whether how sinful you have or haven’t been, but you still don’t have an assurance that you have the Holy Spirit, go to Jesus and say, Lord, I’m not sure what to think of me, whether I have your Spirit or not, but I certainly ask you if he hasn’t been given to me, give him now. and God will answer your prayer. You can trust him to keep you as belonging to him and he will give you. And sometimes when people lack assurance of salvation and they come and ask, I say, well, I want to lead us in a prayer and you pray like this, Lord Jesus, if you haven’t taken me as yours before, do it now. Lord, if you haven’t forgiven my sins,

[00:35:14] I’ve been wanting you to have. If you haven’t come into my life and had your spirit permanently live in me, I want you to know you’re welcome now and I’m going to trust you to keep your word and I’ve done that from this moment on. And that’s how you help someone who doesn’t have any assurance of salvation, just to take him at his word that he’ll come and permanently remain. It won’t save you from facing a judgment for Christians, won’t save you from having to give an account of how you lived as a Christian but it does let you know that you’re going to be with him in the end which is a fantastic thing let’s have a word of prayer Heavenly Father we give you praise tonight for the fact that we don’t have to be like King Saul fancy being someone who prophesied Lord it makes me a bit suspicious

[00:36:07] that people who trust in all the gifts they think they have have trust in the wrong thing they better trust in the fact that they know they’ve been regenerated born again that once in a lifetime thank you Lord for how Jesus spoke about it being a person who needs to be born of the flesh born of water he called it physical birth but also needs to be born of the spirit if there’s anyone here who’s never been born of the spirit would you lead them Lord you got control of even those troubling spirits and were sovereign over them would you get in control of our hearts so if there’s a lack of having been born again in some heart here that you will let them know that they won’t have to struggle of having no assurance about it but they’ll know that they’re in the door with you we pray this in Jesus name and for his sake Amen Thank you.