Well, this is a rather strange
story in many ways. Recently, as I mentioned, we've
been thinking about Samuel and Saul in the Old Testament. Samuel
was a prophet of God. Saul was is said to be the first
king of Israel. The people wanted a king. They
did not want a prophet to look after their affairs. They did not want God to look
after their affairs. And they were turning their back
on Samuel by choosing Saul and they were turning their back
on God They wanted to be like all the other nations that lived
round about. They wanted a king that would
lead them out into battle, that would go before them against
their enemies, and God gave them what they asked for. We know
that it wasn't going to be a good experience for them, but God
gave them what they asked for nevertheless. And it wasn't long
before Saul was called into action to do what Israel wanted him
to do, which was to lead them out into battle against their
enemies. And Nahash, the Ammonite, Maybe
we should call him Nahash the Nasty because he was a pretty
nasty person. He was a bully, he was brutal,
and he had a sharp sense of how to terrorise the people. He told them that the only way
they would have peace with him would be if he took out their
right eye. And all the men of that city
were told that unless they wanted their city destroyed, their homes
destroyed, their wives and children destroyed, they would have to
come out and get their eye taken out. So it was a brutal, brutal
thing that he wanted to do. And this man, Nehash, was an
Ammonite. He had come from the nation just
across the border. Now, I don't know that you have
a grasp of this, but basically we've got Israel and we've got
the River Jordan at the side, and we had a little group of
tribes who stayed on the other side of Jordan. And then Amun
was beside that group of tribes. There were two and a half tribes,
I think, stayed on this side of Jordan when the Children of
Israel went into the Promised Land. And it was that little
group that were being attacked. And it was therefore going to
be difficult for the Children of Israel, if they were going
to help, to get across the Jordan. And If you remember what we've
read, there were only seven days involved anyway. Well, the story unfolds that Nahash,
probably because he thought, I'm not going to have any trouble
with these people. I'll give them the seven days
that they ask and they can go and ask for help from their Israelite
brethren from Saul. Nahash probably thought, that
because Saul had just come to power, because there was an amount
of unrest in the country, that he would not be able to raise
an army and this would be an opportunity for him to mock Israel
for the rest of his life. Nehash would be able to embarrass
Israel by this act that he performed. And there's a couple of things
that I just want to notice about that. Nehash took advantage of
a period of uncertainty in Israel to attack Israel and to shame
Israel. The Ammonites hated Israel so
much that they wanted to do them as much terrible harm as they
could. and they wanted to embarrass
and shame them. And that was the point about
putting out the right eye. Actually, there is perhaps some
significance about that. Most people are right-handed.
That means that most men, when they are fighting, hold their
sword in their right hand, and they hold their shield in their
left hand, and they go into battle with their shield in front of
their left side of their face and their sword like this. Well,
with their right eye put out, they were effectively blind in
battle. They would be able to work and earn money and pay tribute
to Nahash, but they wouldn't be able to fight against him.
And this may well be the thought behind taking out the right eye.
But he was a man who was opportunistic. He used the instability in Israel
in order to attack the people at that time. And you know, these
people, the children of Israel, did not ask the Lord for help.
I find that really interesting, that when Nahash went to attack
them and came against them, they said, let us go and ask for help
from our brethren. They didn't ask for help from
the Lord. And I think that's because they
had not just lost the sight in one eye, they'd lost the sight
in both eyes as far as spiritual things were concerned. They had
lost sight of God. And I think that Satan is a little
bit like Nahash the Ammonite, Nahash the nasty. Satan's a little
bit like that because he takes opportunity to attack us when
we're down. He takes opportunity to attack
us in periods of instability in our lives. when we're going
through problems, when we're feeling the difficulties, when
we feel weak, when we're distracted, when we're confused perhaps about
what's happening in our life. Israel wasn't even expecting
to fight the Ammonites. They had appointed Saul so that
he could fight the Philistines, but the Ammonites came behind
them. They attacked them from the back and that's what Satan
does with the Lord's people. Now Saul was not fully in charge
yet of the children of Israel and so Nahash assumed that it
was going to be an easy victory. But what we discover is that
the Lord stirred up the people of Israel. The Lord stirred them
up and the Lord caused both Saul and the people of Israel to feel
a sense of offence at what Nehash was suggesting. And in an amazing
feat, Saul called 300,000 fighters to come to the defence
of Jabesh Gilead and another 30,000 from the tribe of Judah
itself. So that all of these people came,
they marched through Israel, they marched across the Jordan
and in the space of just a few days they were able to tell the
people of Jabesh Gilead that they would be there to defend
and to help them. And that's what Saul did. He
divided the army into three and in the early morning he attacked
the Ammonites and he made them flee. He fought them from the
early morning till the middle of the afternoon and the ranks
of the Ammonites broke and they fled back to their own country
and there wasn't two of them ran together. That was how devastating
the attack was. They were all separated from
their friends. And I want to just make a couple
of quick lessons from this passage and that's us done. Most of the
older people here, I think, will soon be able to testify and the
younger people will soon know for themselves that Satan and
sin and temptation are subtle enemies for God's people. Satan's
a subtle enemy. He doesn't attack us full front. He doesn't cause us trouble when
we're strong and when we're feeling good. He attacks us when we're
weak, he attacks us when we're down, and he attacks us from
the back. And like these Ammonite enemies,
We don't see him coming. He creeps up behind us. He attacks
when we don't expect. And the other thing is that these
people, these people from Jabesh Gilead, they did not ask the
Lord's help. The citizens of that city didn't
ask for God's help. And there's a lesson in there
for us. Because we don't know how and when Satan is going to
attack us, we need the Lord's help. We constantly need to be
asking the Lord to help us and to make us wise as to the dangers
that there are around about us. The second thing that I want
to notice is that it is always good to notice the Lord's hand
in the events of our life. Although these people didn't
ask for God's help, the Lord was still watching after the
needs of his people. And he stirred up the heart of
Saul, and he stirred up the hearts of the people of Israel, and
he caused them, I think they must have heard that call and
they could only have heard it from their neighbours. It must
have gone through the land like person talking to person all
the way through. They must have put their plough
down and picked up their sword and marched straight into battle.
Such was the speed at which this army formed and this victory
was won. And the Lord helps us in our
lives. The Lord leads us and guides
us. The Lord speaks to us. And sometimes
it's through just reading the Bible. Sometimes it's when we're
speaking with perhaps a parent or a friend. Sometimes it's when
we hear the gospel preached. The Lord speaks to us and he
teaches us what we should do. So we should always look for
the hand of the Lord, for the direction of the Lord in our
lives, and we should be ready to identify God's goodness in
the things that he does for us in our lives, and have occasion
and opportunity to thank him for his grace and his mercy.
And then just lastly on this point, Saul became a deliverer
for the people of Jabesh Gilead when he fought their battle for
them and he saved them from their enemy, this man, the Ammonite,
Nahash the Ammonite. especially he was their deliverer
because they were so weak and defenceless. And this too is
a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. Saul moved quickly to save the
men of the city. He flew to their defence with
that army that he gathered. And neither the distance that
he had to travel, or the river that he had to cross, or the
darkness, because they must have marched during the night, The
darkness of the journey caused Saul's army to falter and nothing
will stop the Lord Jesus Christ from coming to help His people
when we are in trouble. So let us trust Him. Let us look
to Him. Let us seek help from Him. Let us be aware that the Lord
is ready to help His people. And the victory over the Ammonites
and Nahash thrilled the nation of Israel. Samuel used the excitement
of that time to quickly gather the people at Gilgal and they
appointed Saul and anointed Saul as their new king. This was the
beginning of the reign of the kings in Israel and God used
this event, even the troubles of this event, in order to forge
the people together. Sometimes it takes troubles for
us to know who our real friends are and here we see an example
of how the Lord used the troubles of an enemy's attack to bring
the people of Israel together. The Lord was honoured at that meeting
when Samuel sacrificed and they anointed Saul as king, so that
Saul's Kingship began with a sacrifice, again pointing to the need of
the people for the Lord Jesus Christ who would come in the
future. And he showed the people their
need of God's true sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ as the
foundation of their lives. And as Saul was able to deliver
the men and women and children of Jabesh Gilead, so we are reminded
by that sacrifice that Samuel performed, that there is salvation
through the death of the Lamb of God, our Saviour. May the
Lord bless these thoughts to us.