I gave thee a king in Mine anger, and took him away in My wrath.
Saul
The Israelites seem to have asked for a king from an unthankful caprice and waywardness. The ill conduct of Samuel’s sons was the occasion, an “evil heart of unbelief” was the cause. To punish them, God gave them a king “after their own heart.” There is, in true religion, a sameness, an absence of hue and brilliancy, in the eyes of the natural man. Samuel had too much of primitive simplicity about him to please the Israelites; they felt they were behind the world, and clamoured to be put on a level with the heathen. Saul had much to recommend him to minds thus greedy of the dust of the earth. He was brave, daring, resolute; gifted, too, with strength of body as well as of mind. Both his virtues and his faults were such as became an Eastern monarch, and were adapted to secure the fear and submission of his subjects. Samuel’s conduct in the national emergency is far above human praise. Personally qualified Saul was for a time a prosperous king. But from the beginning the prophet’s voice is raised both against the people and king in warnings and rebukes, which are omens of his destined destruction, according to the text. Here, then, a question may be raised--Why was Saul thus marked for vengeance from the beginning? The question leads to a deeper inspection of his character. The first duty of every man is the fear of God--a reverence for His Word, a love of Him, and a desire to obey Him. Now Saul lacked “his one thing.” He was never under the abiding influence of religion, however he might be at times moved and softened. What nature made him, that he remained, without improvement; with virtues which had no value, because they required no effort, and implied the influence of no principle. There was a deadness to all considerations not connected with the present world. It is his habit to treat prophet and priest with a coldness, to say the least, which seems to argue some great internal defect. We have no reason to believe, from the after history, that the Divine gift at his anointing left any religious effect on his mind. The immediate occasion of his rejection was his failing under a specific trial of his obedience, as set before him at the very time he was anointed. There was no professed or intentional irreverence in Saul’s conduct. He outwardly respected the Mosaic ritual. But he was indifferent, and cared for none of these things. From the time of Saul’s disobedience in the matter of Amalek, Samuel came no more to see Saul, whose season of probation was over. He finishes his bad history by an open act of apostasy from the God of Israel. He consulted the sorceress at Endor. Unbelief and wilfulness are the wretched characteristics of Saul’s history--an ear deaf to the plainest commands, a heart hardened against the most gracious influences. (J. H. Newman, B. D.)
A gift of God’s anger
You were so set upon it, that you would have a king; if you will, take him, saith God, and take him with all that shall follow after. So that it was (as one speaks) rather from an angry God than from an entreated one. Saul and Jeroboam were both given in anger.
1. God may have a hand in things wherein men sin exceedingly.
2. Things that are evil may yet have present success.
3. God’s gifts are not always in love. Take heed of immoderate desires for any worldly thing.
I. How we may know that what god gives is in anger, not in love. It is a very hard thing to convince men, if they have their desires satisfied, that it is rather from anger than love. Men are so well pleased with the satisfying of their desires that they can be very hardly convinced but that God intends good to them in it
1. When you desire a gift, rather than God in it. When your desires are for the gift rather than the Giver, you can have no comfort that there is love in it.
2. When our desires are immoderate and violent.
3. When God grants men their desires before the due time. They have what they would have, but they have it not in God’s time.
4. When God grants us what we would have, but without the blessing. He grants the thing, but takes away the blessing of the thing, He takes away the comfort and satisfaction of it. “They shall eat, but they shall not be satisfied.”
5. When that which we desire is merely to satisfy our lusts. We do not desire such and such things that by them we may be fitted for the service of God.
6. When men are so eager that they care not whether the gift comes from a reconciled or a provoked God; it is all one to them (Num_11:1-35.).
7. When God regards not our preparation for a mercy. Carnal hearts take no great care themselves of it. Let me have it, say they, our fitness matters not. It is your sin and wickedness not to regard the preparation of your hearts for what you have, and it is God’s judgment to give it to you before you are pre pared. A gracious heart, when it would have a mercy, is as careful to get the heart prepared for the mercy as to obtain it.
8. When we rest on the means we use, and seek not God by prayer.
9. When God gives us our desires, but not a sanctified use of them. When God gives you the shell, but not the kernel, surely it is not in love. All the good things that wicked men have, are but shells without kernels.
10. When a secret curse attends what we have.
11. When we regard not what becomes of others, so we have our wants satisfied.
12. When God, in satisfying our desires, makes way for some judgment.
13. When men are greedy of things to the disregard of results; when they would have their desires satisfied in a foolish way, never minding what inconveniences may follow, but merely looking to their present comfort.
14. When men seek to have their desires satisfied, merely because they love change.
15. When our desires of further mercies make us forget former mercies.
16. When men desire new things out of mistrust of God.
17. If we seek to attain our desires by unlawful means. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
Answers to improper prayers
The flying fish, says the fable, had originally no wings, but being of an ambitious and discontented temper she repined at being always confined to the water, and wished to soar into the air. “If I could fly like the birds,” said she, “I should not only see more of the beauties of nature, but I should be able to escape from those fish which are continually pursuing me, and which render my life miserable.” She therefore petitioned Jupiter for a pair of wings, and immediately she perceived her fins to expand. They suddenly grew to the length of her whole body, and became at the same time so strong as to do the office of a pinion. She was at first much pleased with her new powers, and looked with an air of disdain on all her former companions; but she soon perceived herself exposed to new dangers. While flying in the air she was incessantly pursued by the tropic bird and the albatross, and when for safety she dropped into the water, she was so fatigued with her flight that she was less able than ever to escape from her old enemies the fish. Finding herself more unhappy than before, she now begged of Jupiter to recall his present; but Jupiter said to her, “When I gave you your wings I well knew that they would prove a curse; but your proud and restless disposition deserved this disappointment. Now, therefore, what you begged as a favour keep as a punishment.” (Evenings at Home.)
