5 The Philistines mustered to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen, and troops like the sand on the seashore in multitude; they came up and encamped at Michmash, to the east of Beth-aven. 6 When the Israelites saw that they were in distress (for the troops were hard pressed), the people hid themselves in caves and in holes and in rocks and in tombs and in cisterns. 7 Some Hebrews crossed the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. Saul was still at Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling.
8 He waited seven days, the time appointed by Samuel; but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the people began to slip away from Saul. 9 So Saul said, “Bring the burnt offering here to me, and the offerings of well-being.” And he offered the burnt offering. 10 As soon as he had finished offering the burnt offering, Samuel arrived; and Saul went out to meet him and salute him. 11 Samuel said, “What have you done?” Saul replied, “When I saw that the people were slipping away from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines were mustering at Michmash, 12 I said, ‘Now the Philistines will come down upon me at Gilgal, and I have not entreated the favor of the Lord’; so I forced myself, and offered the burnt offering.” 13 Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly; you have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which he commanded you. The Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever, 14 but now your kingdom will not continue; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart; and the Lord has appointed him to be ruler over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.” 15 And Samuel left and went on his way from Gilgal. The rest of the people followed Saul to join the army; they went up from Gilgal toward Gibeah of Benjamin.
Today’s Lesson is the turning point in Saul’s kingship. Paranoid and anxious, Saul is in a war with the Philistines, and because he is authoritarian and suspicious, he moves to take control of the priesthood. But the old priest Samuel will have none of it. He arrives and speaks the Word of the LORD to Saul, prophesying his downfall.
Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was put to death by the Nazis for his resistance to their reign. Bonhoeffer was a part of the “Confessing Church”, which in the rise of the cult of Hitler gathered at a place called Barmen and released its document of protest called the Barmen Declaration. The first point in the Declaration says the following:
“Jesus Christ, as he is attested to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death.
“We reject the false doctrine that the Church could and should recognize as a source of its proclamation, beyond and besides this one Word of God, yet other events, powers, historic figures and truths as God's revelation.”
The Lesson today tells us political power or figure can subvert, misuse, abuse, or blaspheme the power of God without consequence. God will not be mocked; nor will God allow God’s name to be profaned. And we know this because when Samuel left Saul for Gilgal, the power and anointing of God left with him; and soon Saul would find this out.
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