Now verse 1 of 1 Samuel 11, Then
Nahash the Ammonite came up and encamped against Jabesh Gilead.
And all the men of Jabesh said unto Nahash, Make a covenant
with us, and we will serve thee. Now the Ammonites that came against
Israel here are descendants of Lot. And if you'll turn over
to Deuteronomy chapter 2, you'll see that the children
of Israel, when they came into the Promised Land, they were
forbidden by God to harm the Ammonites when they came there.
Deuteronomy 2 verse 19, And thou comest nigh over against the
children of Ammon, to stress them not, nor meddle with them,
for I will not give thee of the land of the children of Ammon
any possession, because I have given it unto the children of
Lot for a possession. Now we know Lot was not always
a faithful God made him righteous. He was righteous in Christ, but
he was not always a faithful man. But God was faithful to
his covenant and to his word, both to Lot and to his descendants. So they had this land that the
children of Israel could not take. And this is such an indictment
on human nature, that God showed kindness to the descendants of
Lot for Lot's sake, and we see how they treated God's kindness.
In return, they treated God's people with This cruelty, these
people, the same people who would not harm them when they came
into the land that God promised to Abraham. So they come up and
surround them and they intend all this cruelty. And the response
by the men of Jabesh was, you know, they didn't come out to
fight. They wanted to pacify them and say, now we'll sign
a treaty with you if you'll let us. You know, they acted like
defenseless cowards instead of acting like the people of God.
They had a greater sense of their own weakness than they did of
God's power. I mean, they just capitulated
right off the bat and said, we'll sign this treaty with you. And
when they say here, we will serve thee, they're not immediately
volunteering to be the slaves of the Ammonites. What they're
saying is, we'll pay you tribute. We'll pay you taxes, like protection
money, you know, from the mob. We'll pay you protection money.
Now, a long time ago, People of Jabesh had broken God's covenant. They left the Lord's ways. They
worshiped idols. But you see how ready they are
to make a covenant with the heathen? And I'll tell you why that is. Once you compromise the gospel,
once you break the covenant of God, you'll make a covenant with
anybody, anywhere. And that's what they did. They
wanted to make a covenant. Well, verse 2, Nahash the Ammonite
answered them, on this condition will I make a covenant with you.
that I may thrust out all your right eyes and lay it for a reproach
upon all Israel." You see, Nahash is not interested in getting
a little bit of money to put into the treasury. He wants everything. Unconditional surrender. He wants
it all. He's going to take all their
money. He's going to make them slaves. He's going to bore out
their right eye, the right eye of every man, woman, and child
in that city. And he's going to humiliate them and humiliate
all of Israel. He's going to have it all. And
this thrusting out of the right eye, that's more than just, you
know, causing them pain and a lifetime disability. This is serving a
military purpose. You know, in those days, soldiers,
they held their shield in their left hand and they covered the
left part of their body and they covered their left eye and they
fought with their right hand and, you know, what they could
see with their right eye. Sometimes when they had helmets,
those helmets even covered the left eye. You were covered that
way and you were fighting with the right hand. Well, you can't
do that if your right eye is gone. If you're covering your
left eye and your right eye is gone, you're fighting blind.
You can't fight. Nahash here knew that if they
couldn't fight back, they'd be as slaves forever. They'd never
be able to mount an uprising. But if he only bored out their
right eye, they could still see with their left. They could be
slaves. They just couldn't be soldiers. That was his purpose.
And Nahash's intention was to put all the people of that city
and the whole nation of Israel to shame because nobody could
stop him from doing this. And really he's going to try
to put God to open shame. So verse three, the elders of
Japheth said unto him, give us seven days respite that we may
send messengers unto all the coast of Israel. And then if
there be no man to save us, we will come out to thee. You know,
you notice they didn't start crying out to God. They already
broke his covenant. They didn't look that way. They're
looking to the arm of the flesh to save them. And you wonder
why the people of God were so willing to sell themselves into
slavery. You know, they said, now if we
can't find help in seven days, then we'll come out to you and
we'll allow you to gore our right eye out, to take everything that
we have, and we'll allow you to make us your slaves. Just
do whatever you want to with us. I mean, you'd think they'd
at least put up a fight. I mean, they'd be better off.
You'd think to fight and take the chance on dying, I mean,
you know, you might win. But I'd rather put up a fight
and lose than just go surrender like that. Nahash thought, well,
no, there's no way they can get an army back here in seven days'
time. It's too short of a time. The
distance is too far. There's no way they can get an
army back here in seven days. So he agreed to their terms of
surrender. And he probably thought by doing it this way, he would
bring more reproach on Israel. I gave you seven full days, and
you wouldn't come help your brethren, or you couldn't come help your
brethren, and I did to them what I wanted. So that just keeps
more reproach on Israel. So that's why he agreed to those
terms. So verse 4, Then came the messengers to Gibeah of Saul,
and told the tidings in the ears of the people. And all the people
lifted up their voices and wept. And, behold, Saul came after
the herd out of the field. And Saul said, What aileth the
people that they weep? And they told him the tidings
of the men of Jabesh. And the Spirit of God came upon
Saul when he heard those tidings, and his anger was kindled greatly.
And he took a yoke of oxen, and hewed them in pieces. and sent
them throughout all the coast of Israel by the hand of messengers,
saying, Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel,
so shall it be done unto his oxen. And the fear of the Lord
fell on the people, and they came out with one consent. And
when he numbered them in Bezek, the children of Israel were three
hundred thousand, and the men of Judah thirty thousand." Now
tidings of what's going on in Jabesh come to Gibeah where Saul
lives. Now, so far, you know, Saul's
been anointed king, but there really wasn't anything for Saul
to do as king. You know, he left the administration
of the country to Samuel, and he's still farming. He's still
going out, you know, with his father's herds. So one evening,
he's coming back with the herds, whatever the animals, you know,
they had, working out there in the fields, and he sees the people
crying. And when he finds out why they're crying, his anger
is kindled. The Spirit of God came upon Saul
and enabled him to act like a king and enabled him to be a military
leader. When the spirit of God came on
Saul, suddenly this farm boy has got a great deal of concern
for the welfare of the people of Israel. He suddenly got a
great deal of zeal for the glory of the nation of Israel. So Saul
drafts an army and he does it by a show of force. Now people
are kind of hard on Saul about that and we'll get to this in
a minute. But militarily, this is a good idea for Saul to do
this. Back in the Revolutionary War,
there were some men mounted some sort of insurrection against
George Washington, against his leadership. A bunch of them deserted.
And Washington caught them. And he had several of those men
shot. Now he spared some of them. He showed mercy to some of them.
But some of them he had shot. And he did it for this reason.
He wanted men to fear him. So that he could keep the military
together. You know, if he let them desert,
everybody's going to desert. He's not going to have any army. So he
did, and he kept that army together through fear. Those men feared
to desert because of Washington's leadership. And that's what solved
this. Militarily, he's, you know, he's
using some fear here to get his army together. And he took his
own oxen. He cut them in pieces and sent
those pieces throughout Israel, warning people. If the same thing
is going to happen to all your oxen, if you don't follow Saul,
and you notice he said, and Samuel, you know, he's using Samuel's
name as weight. You've got to follow Samuel too, because he
hasn't really developed that yet. So he's using Samuel's name
as weight. And the people came out with
one consent, with one heart, with one mind, with one purpose
to follow Saul and defend their nation because the fear of the
Lord fell upon them. It really wasn't the fear of
Saul, it was the fear of the Lord that fell on the people.
And buddy, he got an army. I mean, in a short span of time,
he drafted a 330,000 man army, just like overnight. So verse
9, they said unto the messengers that came, thus shall ye say
unto the men of Jabesh Gilead, tomorrow, by that time the sun
be hot, ye shall have hell. And the messengers came and showed
it to the men of Jabesh, and they were glad. Therefore the
men of Jabesh said," they said this to Nahash, he said, "'Tomorrow
we will come out unto you, and ye shall do with us all that
seemeth good unto you.'" Now you imagine, here they, the people
of Jabesh-Gilead sent these messengers away, and here they sit waiting.
And what's waiting for them by the time the messengers come
back is tomorrow. Your enemy is going to gore out
your right eye. You're going to watch the enemy
gore out the right eye of your family, your children, your loved
ones, your neighbors. They're going to take everything
you own, take you and your family, your children, your little ones,
off to be their slaves. Now, that's bad evening. I mean,
that is a bad evening. Well, how would you feel? How
do you imagine you feel if at the last minute you got good
news? There's an army coming to your
rescue. Now that's good news from a far
country. And the people were glad. I mean,
we just, we really can't imagine how glad they were. You know,
Nahash is sitting out there thinking, I've got it right where I want
it. My buddy, I'm going to have my way tomorrow. Well, verse
11, and it was so on the morrow that Saul put the people in three
companies and they came into the midst of the host and the
morning watch and slew the Ammonites until the heat of the day. And
it came to pass that they which remained were scattered, so that
two of them were not left together." Now Saul, he's grown up as a
farmer, a husbandman, just keeping his father's herds and so forth. He never had any military training,
but this man developed and executed a battle plan that graduates
of West Point would be proud of. Well, how did he do that?
Remember, we read the Spirit of God came upon him. And when
the Spirit of God comes upon a man, he is fully equipped to
do the job that God's called him to do. The apostles, most
of them were fishermen, weren't they? The Lord said, follow me. I'll make you fishers of men.
And those men, those fishermen, turned the world upside down
without any formal, most of them, without any formal education
whatsoever, because God equipped them to do the job that he called
them to do. And yet the same thing is true
for all of us. We never win any of our own battles by our own
strength or ingenuity or something. We never accomplish anything
on our own except sin. That's the one thing we do on
our own. It's always the Lord who works in us both to will
and to do of his good pleasure. It's the Lord that enables us
to do anything helpful or anything that's a blessing to anybody
else. And that's what happened to Saul. The Lord made him a
blessing to his people. He enabled Saul to completely
annihilate that enemy. He annihilated them so badly
that anybody who wasn't killed couldn't even find a buddy to
escape with. They had to go retreat on their own. And you'll notice
Saul's army got there just when he said they'd get there. Look
over at Psalm 46. Now Saul took this army and he
marched them. This is a 60-mile march they
had to make. From there at Gibeah to Jabesh,
it's 60 miles. And he got there and he marched
them that 60-mile march in one day and one night and got there
in the morning march. Look at Psalm 46, verse 1. God is our refuge and strength,
the very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though
the earth be removed, though the mountains be carried in the
midst of the sea, though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,
though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. There is
a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God,
the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the
midst of her. She shall not be moved. God shall
help her, and that right early." And you see, and that right early,
Early means when the morning approaches, at the morning watch,
right on time. God always sends his help to
his people right on time. And that's when Saul got there,
right when he said he would. And buddy, he had a victory.
I mean, this is a huge military victory. And the people of Israel,
it looks like at this time, got everything they wanted from the
king. They got their king to go out and fight their battle
for them, and he won, didn't he? It doesn't seem to dawn on
anybody. This is really not unusual in
the history of Israel. How many times was the enemy
completely annihilated? And they didn't have a king then
because God fought their battles. Maybe it looks to me like they
completely forgot that. And buddy, Saul's popularity
numbers in the polls were never higher than they were this day.
I mean, he won the victory. People were just falling all
over themselves to fawn at Saul. It's just like President Bush
after Desert Storm. His popularity numbers never
were higher than that. That's what Saul is. And look
at verse 12. This is how high his popularity
numbers are. The people said unto Samuel,
who is he that said shall Saul reign over us? Bring the men
that we may put them to death. Saul's popularity was so high
They wanted to kill anyone who ever dared to question Saul. If you disagree with Saul at
some point in the future, buddy, they're just going to put you
to death. That's how high his popularity was. Well, look at
verse 13. And Saul said, there shall not
a man be put to death this day, for today the Lord hath wrought
salvation in Israel. Now here's another example of
Saul having some wisdom. You know, when God sent his spirit
upon him, Saul had a little bit of wisdom. Now, we know he doesn't
always keep that, but he does at this day. He's not always
as wise or as gracious as he is today, but he was on this
day because the spirit of God was upon him. And only Saul had
the authority to put a stop to these executions. Saul was the
only one who could grant pardon to those men. And it's a shining
example of sovereign mercy. And what Saul is teaching the
people is now God's been good to us. God's given us this victory. Let's not be so harsh on each
other. And that's a good thing for us to keep in mind. God has
been good to us. He's good to his people. Let's
not be so harsh with people. Just, you know, think about how
gracious and merciful the Lord's been to us. And besides that,
Saul could say, now these men, they may have been our enemies
at one point. But they answered the call to arms. They came and
fought with us. They've been part of this victory.
Could be now they've been converted from our enemies to our friends.
And if they have been, they're going to be friends for life.
They're going to be good friends. And the Lord could do that, couldn't
he? That's what he does with all
his people. He takes those who are his enemies and turns them
into his friends, his brides. And Saul even has the wisdom
to give the Lord the credit. He says, no one's going to die
today for today the Lord has wrought salvation in Israel.
Well, his popularity just keeps growing, doesn't it? The people
heard that, you know, they saw his ability in war. They saw
his sovereign mercy. So verse 14, then says Samuel
to the people, come and let's go to Gilgal and renew the kingdom
there. And all the people went to Gilgal.
And there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal. And
there they sacrificed sacrifices of peace offerings before the
Lord. And there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly."
Now people went and they renewed the kingdom. They had a proper
public coronation for Saul. They had a huge party. They offered
the sacrifices and peace offerings and the kingdom was established
in Saul's hand. Well, that's the story. Now,
here's the picture of Christ that I want us to get. Nahash
is a picture of the law, the law that's come up against God's
elect. And by nature, when we're confronted
with the law, what the flesh wants to do is make a treaty
with the law. You know, we want to tell the law, we'll pay you
tribute. You know, we'll do the best that we can do. And, you
know, kind of have an agreement. We do the best that we can do
and you leave us alone. We're not only willing to sell
ourselves into slavery, we have sold ourselves into slavery to
the law. That's what Paul said. He said,
I'm carnal, I'm sold under sin. I've sold myself into slavery,
to sin and to the law. But the law doesn't want tribute. The law doesn't want just the
best we can do. The law wants everything. The
law demands perfect obedience. And if not, it'll kill you. That's
the only way that the law has a covenant with you. If you're
not perfectly obedient, the law puts you to death. The law, don't
try to enter into a covenant, a treaty with the law of God,
because the law will take everything you have and put you to open
shame. That's what the law does. But
Christ our King came to rescue his people. And he didn't gather
an army, come to rescue his people. He came by himself. the captain
of our salvation came by himself, and he has brought salvation
to spiritual Israel with his own arm. And he did it by fighting
the battle of battles at Calvary's Hill. In his death, his burial,
and his resurrection, the Lord Jesus Christ has obtained eternal
redemption for us, for us who believe. And he has given us
that victory freely. And we are free from all condemnation,
from the condemnation of the law. We're free from having to
offer any obedience to the law as a way of earning righteousness.
We're free. And I'll illustrate that point
with this story. Remember when that mob came to
take our Lord? And one of the things they came
accusing him of was insurrection. That's one of the things they
accused him of, to Pilate, insurrection. Well, now, if this man is out
here and he's such an effective teacher and leader, teaching
insurrection, why didn't they take his co-conspirators that
are right there with him? I mean, these men who are the
closest to him, they must be, you know, mounting this insurrection
too, right? Why didn't they take them? Because
the master said, it's me you seek. Let these go free. And
those men who you would think would be the co-conspirators,
who would suffer the same fate as the Lord, went free. Because
the Lord purchased their freedom. That day, he wrought salvation
and set his people free. Now in Saul, he heard about the
plight of the people there in Jabesh. His anger was kindled. He had a care, a concern about
the welfare of his countrymen. Well, that's the same reason
that Christ came to save his people. Because for some unknown
reason that's known only to God, he loves his people. He loves
them with an eternal, everlasting love. And he came to save his
people with zeal. I mean, you think Saul had some
zeal that day. Our Lord had zeal to save his
people from their sins. Isaiah said several times, speaking
about the salvation that's coming through the coming Messiah, he
said the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. The
zeal of God himself is going to perform the salvation of his
people. Now, he did it for the people
that he loved. But you know no one is born into
this world loving God. No one is born into this world
loving Christ in return. The carnal mind is enmity against
God, for it's not subject to the law of God, neither indeed
can be. It's impossible for this flesh
to have a heart that loves God. Now, some of God's elect, the
very first time they hear the gospel, the very first time they
hear the name of Christ, they bow to Him. They realize who
and what they are. The Lord gives them eyes to see,
and the very first time they hear His name, They bow. Others
hear his name for years. They hear the gospel preached
for years. And they still live in rebellion.
Now, injustice. We know this. God, injustice
should destroy all sinners. Injustice. He could do that.
He'd still be just and right in doing it. And we would say,
especially those who heard the gospel, who heard about the glorious
work of the Lord Jesus Christ and still lived in rebellion,
especially those people should be put to death. That's what
we say, isn't it? Well, thankfully, God's ways
are not our ways. Thank God for sovereign mercy. There is no other kind of mercy
than sovereign mercy that's shown sovereignly from the King. You
and me, we're rebels by nature, by birth, by practice, we're
rebels, we're sinners, but we're objects of mercy by sovereign
choice. Because God chose sovereignly
to set his love, to set his affection upon a people. And none of those
people, none of God's elect are going to die eternally, today
or any other day. because the Lord Jesus Christ
hath wrought salvation in spiritual history. He has wrought full,
complete atonement. That means it's finished. He said it is finished. The work's
done. There is nothing left for the
sinner to do. Every sin has been put away and
we have been restored to God. We've been given the full access
to the Father that we lost in Adam. Now think about that for a minute.
Just think about salvation is full. It's finished. It's complete. It's given to us freely. The human mind, we can't comprehend
that. My soul, how thankful. I was
reading over this again this morning, thinking how thankful
I am for a Savior who saves, that the work is finished. What
a Savior we have. What a Savior. What a gospel
that we have to preach. This is the gospel. This is good
tidings from a far country that God sent His people. Now, I tell
you, you come to the Lord Jesus Christ. You come to him, you
bow to him, you lovingly bow in submission and thanksgiving
to him. Because old Saul, now he drafted
his army by threat, didn't he? The Lord Jesus Christ has an
army that no man can number. But his people have never come
to him because of threat or by force. His people come to him
lovingly and willingly, not out of a slavish fear. Not out of
some fear. Your mom told me when I was born,
like a day or two later, you know, dad left or went to church. He said he had to go to church.
He thought God would kill our baby if he didn't. You know, if that's
the reason that you're serving God, you're not serving him.
You don't know him. Honestly, if that's the reason
that you're serving God, you do not know him because that's
not the way a child responds to his father. Not at all. It's
out of love. And I'll show you that. Mark
chapter 10. Here's a good example of that. None of God's people follow him
out of fear. This is after the Lord has given
sight to blind Bartimaeus. In verse 52, Mark 10. And Jesus
said unto him, Go thy way. He didn't tell him, now you've
got to follow me. Now you owe me. Go your way. Go on. Thy faith that made thee
whole. And immediately he received his
sight and he followed Jesus in the way. Now his way is the Lord
Jesus Christ. The Lord said, go wherever you
want to go. And where did he go? He followed the Lord. How could he not? And he didn't
do it out of fear. The Lord already gave him the
sight, didn't he? He did it out of love. Remember when the Lord
healed that demoniac, cast those demons out and those swine? And
that old demoniac, who for the first time in his life was sitting
calmly, clothed. They told the Lord, we want you
to depart from our coast. The Lord said, all right, I'm
leaving. And that old boy, he says, Lord, let me come with
you. Let me come. The Lord said, no, you go home. Here's how you follow me. You
go home. and tell your friends and your family what great things
the Lord has done for you. But now I'm telling you, that
boy would have gone back to his house if the Lord hadn't told
him because his desire was to be with the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the way God's people follow
him. A loving desire because I can
do no other. So let's do what Israel of old
did. Now, we're not going to renew God's kingdom. The kingdom
of Christ is eternal. It's not going to be renewed.
It never grows old. But we can celebrate his kingdom, can't
we? We can celebrate again that great salvation that our Lord
Jesus Christ has wrought in spiritual Israel. And it is my prayer that
the Lord will enable us today and every day, as long as the
Lord gives us, to rejoice in Christ our Savior. Rejoice like
Israel did of old in Saul's victory. Oh, they were glad. But with
one big difference. Believers rejoice eternally. This rejoicing in Israel, it
was just temporary. It didn't last long. But we're
not rejoicing in a man of flesh. We're rejoicing in the God-man.
Now, we are so blessed. The people of God. The objects
of sovereign mercy. are so blessed. We are more blessed
than we can, you can't reckon them up in order, but a blessed
people can rejoice, can't we? And I do, and I pray that the
Lord will enable us to do that, as Wayne said in his prayer,
for many years to come, as long as the Lord gives us. All right,
I hope that'll bless you.